The Last Cop Out

5

Calling Willie Armstrong “Junior” was as diminutive as calling Mister Ruth “Babe.” He was a span over six feet, weighed two hundred thirty pounds and could talk like the college graduate which he was or drop into the dialect of a Georgia cotton farmer which his father had been. His teeth were a dazzling white in the blackness of his face, framed in a huge smile as he greeted Gill Burke at the door of his apartment on Lenox Avenue in Harlem.

“You sure got your nerve coming up here, white boy,” he said.

Gill gripped his hand and squeezed just as hard. “None of you cats ever give anybody trouble in the morning. You’re all too happy.”

“We’re tigers, man.”

“Only when the sun goes down. How’s Cammie?”

“Great, man. She started making the grits and red eye gravy soon as you called.”

“I wanted sausages and pancakes, Junior.”

“All on one plate, buddy. Just like the old days. Remember Looney Mooney, that cook we had in basic training?”

“Old take-care-of-the-troops Looney Mooney,” Gill said.

“Right on, friend. Cammie’s cakes makes his look sad, like sad.”

“Then let’s eat.”

Over breakfast the three of them recounted the days from when they had seen so much hell together, through their occasional reunions to the present. Junior Armstrong had opened a neighborhood discount house, survived the economic trends and emerged as a powerful spokesman for the black community. His heavy hand and influential contacts had kept his area cool and not much went on he didn’t know about.

When they finished, Cammie, his pretty little wife who had the only voice he actually feared, sent them into the living room to talk while she cleaned up, setting the coffeepot on the table between them.

Junior offered Gill a cigarette from his pack and snapped the lighter on. “You been hurting since the bust?”

Burke blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. “Not really.”

“Don’t fake me out, buddy.”

“So I hurt for a little while,” Gill said. A touch of humor showed in his eyes and he added, “I’m back again.”

Junior nodded, showing no surprise at all. He listened while Gill sketched in the details and nodded again. “You need some help?”

“A little.”

“Say it, man.”

“A young guy named Henry Campbell who’d be about twenty-five years old. His last place was a furnished room down on Bleecker Street, but he didn’t leave any forwarding address.”

“How long ago?”

“Couple of years.”

“That’s a lot of time.”

“I know, but there aren’t many places he can go, either.”

“Yeah, I know. Being black means being located. You only got one ghetto or another to hole up in. Suppose he left the city?”

“Doubtful. He was born here. Parents dead, two brothers in the Post Office Department who haven’t heard from him in years, but he’s got to have friends.”

“How far did you get?” Junior asked him.

“If he’s working, he’s not using his social security number. He isn’t listed on welfare or unemployment books. He has no known skills, but likes to work around cars. The last time I spoke to him he parked cars in a lot owned by the syndicate.”

Junior took a drag on his cigarette and tapped the ash off into the tray. “That would be the witness who finked out on you that time.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You going to lean on him?”

“Nope. I just want to know why he changed his story. Maybe somebody else leaned on him.”

“He may not have a good memory.”

“Not for me,” Gill said. “For you it might be better.”

“I’d hate to see his tail caught in a sling.”

“So would I. It hurts.”

You can take it. He’s got the odds going against him already.”

“There are ways and ways of sweetening things up, Junior. He does me a favor and I guarantee him a big one back. What do you say?”

The big man sat there smoking a minute, then nodded. “Everybody needs help sooner or later. Let me see what I can do. How soon do you need it?”

“Yesterday.”

“Settle for tomorrow?”

“Any choice?”

“None at all.” Junior grinned, his teeth flashing in the light. When Gill got up he said, “You want an escort back to your end of town?”

“Don’t be silly,” Gill smiled back. “It’s still happy time outside.”

“Only for us cats,” Junior told him. “We’re still nature lovers.”

Gill laughed at him and nodded toward the window. “Sure you are. Who waters your flower box, buddy?”

“Cammie does. She’s the farmer ’round heah. I water hers.”

“You’re a nature lover all right, Junior.”

The pudgy old lady who ran the rooming house on the West Side wouldn’t go inside because she was too comfortable in her canvas chair with the sun warming her and made Gill talk to her on the platform of the sandstone stoop. A bunch of kids made a racket in the street and a pair of winos were sharing a bottle on the curb just a little bit away.

She remembered Ted Proctor, all right, mainly because he was killed the day before his room rent was due and she never did collect it. The few items he left behind she tossed on the garbage can and were picked up before the sanitation men ever arrived. She sold his suitcase for a dollar to a whore who was leaving and his broken watch she had kept for herself and still hadn’t gotten repaired.

“He have any friends around here?”

“Maybe if he had some money, he’d have a friend,” she told him. “You know how these stew bums are.”

“Any visitors?”

She made a face through the folds of fat. “Sometimes Andy from next door if he thought Proctor had a bottle on him.”

“Andy still around?”

“That idiot fell asleep in his doorway last January and died of pneumonia.”

“How often you go into Proctor’s room when he was here?”

She looked at him, her eyes a little wise. He held out the five dollar bill and watched it disappear into her dress pocket. “I changed the sheets and pillowcases every week.”

“What did he keep in his closet?”

“A lot of dirty clothes is all. He didn’t... say, you don’t think I go nosing through a tenant’s things, do you? You’d better know...”

“Just tell me, will you. I already paid.”

Her fat shoulders hunched in a shrug. “Nothing, that’s what he had. At least nothing that counted. A couple of old letters and cards, them stubs from a paycheck... he worked, you know.”

“Part time.”

“Still paid the rent on time.”

“You know what the police found in his room.”

“They didn’t show me nothing. I only read about it in the papers.”

“Ever pull his bottom drawer out all the way? Those wallets were lying there on the catch board.”

“I didn’t even know there was one.”

“A couple of boxes in his closet had some other items besides.”

“They only had dirty clothes when I looked. I told the cops the same thing.”

“How long before he was killed did you look?”

She thought a moment, then: “He died the day before rent day and that’s when I changed the linen. It had to be a week before.”

“He have a gun?”

“Where would he get a gun?”

“I didn’t ask that.”

“He didn’t have nothing I didn’t know about and he didn’t have any gun.”

“Proctor had one when he held up that pawn shop. A brand new gun that sells for a hundred and ten bucks if you buy it legally and maybe twenty hot, but no less. It was a gun stolen from a sporting goods shop and would go for twenty any place on the street.”

“Mister,” the woman said, “if Proctor had twenty bucks in his hand, you could bet your sweet ass he wouldn’t buy any gun with it. He’d be right down the corner slopping up booze in Barney’s joint until he was too drunk to walk, then would come crawling back here to sleep it off. He was scared of his own shadow and if he even found a gun someplace he’d try to sell it before he’d use it.”

“If a guy needed a drink he’d go pretty damn far to get one.”

“Sell the gun, yes. Use it, no,” she insisted. “He was nothing but a bum.” She looked up at him again. “You want more talk and it’ll cost more.”

Gill shook his head. “Nope. You did pretty good. Thanks.”

“The pleasure’s all mine she told him,” patting her pocket.

“Sure I remember. He came in here barreled to his ears waving that gun around and telling me to put my money on the counter. That’s what scared the hell out of me. I see these guys all the time and when they get like that you don’t know what the hell they’re going to do. Mister, I was scared. You know how many times I been held up? Fourteen times and the last one was only two weeks ago.”

“You ought to be broke by now,” Gill said.

“Look, I let them hit the register themselves. I only keep a certain amount in there anyway and they take it and run. It isn’t like I was sitting on a bundle.”

“Where do you keep the rest?”

“In a tight little box welded to the steel floor joists with a time lock on it and a bank deposit three times a week.”

“You said you never saw this Ted Proctor before.”

“Just that once when he tried to hold me up. If it wasn’t for that beat cop seeing it happen that damn drunk could’ve killed me. Look, what the hell you cops going back two years for? Only last month...”

Gill shook his head at the pawnbroker, trying to keep the dislike out of his eyes. “I do what they tell me to, friend.”

“They ought to get more beat cops up here.”

“I’ll tell the commissioner.”

“Sure. What else do you want to know?”

“Nothing.” Gill snapped his pad shut and stuck it in his pocket. “Thanks,” he said and went outside. On the sidewalk he paused and stared up the street. Something was bothering him and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Nothing big, just some detail he’d lost somewhere. Well, it would come back to him. It always did when he let it ferment long enough. He looked at his watch. It was almost one o’clock.

Mrs. Cynthia Berkowitz was still wearing her widowhood like a cape of royalty. Her indignation, anger and frustrations had been salved with grief, self-pity and the solicitations of neighbors who had borne the same burden and were only too happy to reminisce about the late Mr. Berkowitz who had been such a dear man, good provider and never ate anything except kosher nor missed attendance at the local synagogue no matter the weather or condition of his health. Not at all like Mr. Manute whom she classified as practically an infidel who had led her dear departed husband into photographic activities he actually knew nothing about, telling him they were processing art films when actually what they were working on was showing in the neighborhood theaters this very day. Had he known, he certainly would never have had anything to do with it at all.

Gill Burke drank his tea and agreed with her. “What happened to the business. Mrs. Berkowitz?”

“Sold. We got practically nothing. If it wasn’t for the insurance...”

“Who bought it?”

She spread her hands and heaved her immense bosom. “Who remembers? Some things here, some things there. Myron, my cousin, he took care of things. He’s a lawyer, Myron is. If you ever need a lawyer...”

“What about the files?”

“The papers?” Gill nodded. “Bah, papers. Bills they paid, bills they got. Some checks that bounced. Downstairs is a whole box of papers that should get thrown out. Myron, he’s the lawyer, he says I should keep them in case they ask questions about taxes. He knows about taxes, Myron does. Tell me, Mister...”

“Burke.”

“Yes, Mr. Burke. Why should the police want to know about Mr. Berkowitz after all this time? That little foreigner who got killed did it and we couldn’t even sue. If it wasn’t for the insurance...”

“Could I see those papers, Mrs. Berkowitz?”

“Maybe I should call Myron. He’s my lawyer, you know.”

“Call him,” Gill suggested.

“So why should I bother Myron? You are a nice man with the badge and everything. Before everybody from the station house was very nice too. Downstairs in the celler next to the furnace is the big box of papers. Look all you want, then come back and I’ll have some more tea ready. You’d like some soup, maybe?”

“Just tea will be fine.”

He crouched in the dim light of the dusty forty-watt bulb in the ceiling fixture squinting at the array of papers. Their equipment had been purchased all second hand, sixteen millimeter cameras, lights, development supplies and a lot of inexpensive accessories. It had been paid for in cash and receipted. After that their biggest cash outlay seemed to be for a bimonthly delivery of raw film ends from a large midtown supplier. Three months before their deaths, Manute had bought a used thirty-five-millimeter Nikon, a swivel chair and had double locks installed on their office door.

Myron, the lawyer, had left an inventory sheet on top of the pile along with a sales sheet from the auction. Everything had gone for the total price of a little more than two thousand dollars. The sheet was signed by Mrs. Cynthia Berkowitz and Mrs. Irma Manute. Myron’s illegible signature was below theirs.

Gill Burke put everything back in the box, folded the cover into place and went upstairs for some more tea. He spent an hour probing for anything that might fit and something out of place, but all he got was bloated from the inexhaustible teapot.

He told Mrs. Berkowitz good-bye, promised to keep in touch and went downstairs to find a cab. It was almost six o’clock and he was going to see Helen Scanlon for supper. Why, he didn’t know.

Maybe it was the way she kissed, he thought.

They had the guy in a loft over the garage in Brooklyn. He was tied to a chair, his hands and feet numb from the loss of circulation, and all he could do was moan softly behind the tape that covered his mouth. What made it worse was that he couldn’t see. The last thing he remembered was the sharp crack against the back of his head and then total darkness. The darkness was still there behind a cloth whose knot was biting into the wound on his scalp.

When Frank Verdun came in with Slick Kevin, Bingo Miles and Shatzi Heinkle stood up respectfully. The guy in the chair moaned and rolled his head.

“Who is he?” Frank asked.

“All his I.D. reads is William R. Hays. He’s from East Orange, New Jersey.” Bingo pointed to the open attaché case on the floor. “He was in Chicago and Cleveland on the right days. He sure looks like the picture, Mr. Verdun.”

Frank pointed toward the case. “Check it,” he told Slick. He walked over and stood in front of the man in the chair. “He wears glasses?”

Shatzi held out a broken frame and several pieces of the lens. “Same kind as in the picture. They broke when we took him.”

“Clean snatch?”

“We used Bingo’s cab. No problem at all. He wanted to go to the Hilton.”

Kevin finished going through the papers and dropped them back in the case. “He’s got a good cover, Frank. Fabric salesman to upholstery places.”

“Check him out all the way, Slick.” He glanced at Bingo and Shatzi. “You two keep him here and take care of him. I don’t want anything to happen to this guy until we know all about him. He might have a lot to tell us.” He took an ink pad and a white card from his pocket, went behind the chair, daubed the man’s fingers on the black sponge and rolled his fingerprints onto the card. He only used one hand and two of the prints were messy, but they were enough. When he dried the card off he put it in an envelope and stuck it back in his pocket.

The guy moaned again and a wet stain darkened his trousers.

“Your call was a pleasant surprise,” Helen Scanlon told him. “I really didn’t think you’d want to see me again.”

Gill told the waiter to bring more coffee and lit a cigarette. “My turn to apologize for being so rough on you. I could have been nicer in the office... or more hospitable at home.”

“It wouldn’t become you, Mr. Burke.”

“Can’t you call me Gill?”

“All right.”

“Don’t figure me for a social outcast, will you.”

Helen Scanlon smiled gently, playing with a cube of sugar. “You remind me of my father, always the dedicated policeman. Nothing else mattered.”

Gill reached out and laid his hand over hers. “In case you’re interested, this isn’t question and answer time. I felt like inviting you out to dinner because I had you on my mind all day.”

“Why?”

“Not because you work in the Frenchman’s office. They don’t stop me from rousting them if I want to and if I need information I don’t have to play any games to get it, either. I wished to hell I knew why I wanted to see you, but I don’t. I just wanted to, that’s all.” He felt annoyed at himself for some reason.

“You really don’t know much about women, do you?”

“Depends. Why?”

“Because you just gave me the best reason of all,” she said.

“I did?” he said querulously.

She laughed again, turned her hand around and squeezed his. “Do you know what would happen if some journalist saw us together and decided it would make a good story?”

“Limit that to just a couple of journalists, baby. The rest were all on my side and as for the other couple, I’d scratch them so fast it would make their eyes cross. Besides, we’re both old news now anyway. Anything that could be said has already been said.”

“Not with you, Gill. You still have a lot more to say.” She took her hand away, glanced around her and reached into her handbag. She found the small oblong she wanted and handed it to him. “Whose picture is that?”

He took it from her, looked at it barely a second and asked, “Where did you get this?” It was the photo of a man at the counter of a car rental agency.

“A box of them was delivered to Mr. Verdun today. He had them separated into six groups and had them picked up by a man from the main office. He was on the phone for over an hour and was very excited about something. When he was out of the room for a minute I went in to leave some mail and picked one out of the pile.”

Gill said, “Damn,” and looked at the picture again. He could tell it wasn’t an original, but had been recopied from a positive print, but for identification purposes, it was as good as the one that had come in from Cleveland. “Who were the photos sent to?”

“I don’t know. The packages were unmarked.”

“Recognize the guy who picked them up?”

“No. I’m sorry... he came and went too fast. I was busy at the files.”

“This is good enough.”

“Who is it, Gill?”

“A guy they think killed a hood named Holland in Cleveland.”

“Important?”

Gill Burke nodded and tucked the photo away. “Your outfit’s got a pipeline directly into the police department.” He watched the frown pull her face tight. “Don’t let it bother you. That’s nothing new either.” He called the waiter over and gave him a bill with the check, then said to Helen, “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Outside, a light mist was blowing in from the northeast, making a halo around the street lights and laying down an oily slick on the pavement. Con Ed had a night crew digging a hole in the middle of the street, a yellow flasher diverting traffic around the obstacle.

Gill said, “Where would you like to go?”

“If I told you, would you really believe me?”

“Sure.”

“I want to go and straighten up that clutter you call home.”

“Why?”

“Because I just want to and I don’t know why.”

Burke flagged down a cab and they got in.

The man in the restaurant who had made the hurried phone call looked vainly for another cab. There wasn’t any in sight, and the one he had wanted to follow was turning left at the far corner. He swore softly and started walking.

Gill wondered how the hell it took a woman two hours to do something he couldn’t manage in a week. Two hampers and a pillow case of laundry got washed while she put everything else in order and wouldn’t even speak to him while he sat nursing a couple of tall drinks, watching the way her body moved under the old blue oxford police shirt. Her legs were long and athletically contoured like a dancer’s. The shirt was a big one, but her breasts swelled it tight, the tails just long enough to be decently indecent.

Helen had pulled her hair back and tied it in a ponytail. Her face was shiny with sweat and she hummed some silly little tune, smiling while she worked. Gill got one of those odd feelings in his stomach again and went downstairs to get the stuff out of the drier and when he got back she had finished.

She pulled the biggest one of his bath towels out of the laundry bag and told him, “Put your own things away. I don’t know your system. I’m going to take a shower.”

When he had everything sorted and the bed remade, he went back to the living room and refilled his glass. The shower was still going and his hand was shaking. What the hell, he thought, he was getting virgin symptoms. He was picturing her naked in there behind the closed door, her hands soaping her own bare flesh, drying those luscious curves to a pinkish glow with her image a vivid reflection in the full-length mirror.

How would she come out? Totally nude? The towel knotted like a chenille sarong and a look of subtle desire in those deep, dark eyes? Or would she be expecting him to push the door open, exerting the prerogative of the aggressive male?

Shit, broads never disrupted him before. They’d been there from the cuddly little society blonde in the penthouse who had been crazy about him to the flinty pro who had demanded payment for services rendered and it had all been the same. Physical necessity, opportunity and satisfying, but nothing to have to think about. Now he sat there with a mental tourniquet around half a hard-on, all shook up about a woman behind a closed door.

When she came out the jolt was even worse because she was all dressed and the things he had expected to see still had to be imagined and he wished to hell somebody would loosen that damn tourniquet or untie it altogether.

She looked happy and pleased with herself, and after she took the highball out of his hand to take a long, cooling drink, she handed it back and said, “Thank you, Gill. You may think I’m a ding-a-ling, but I had fun.”

He grinned at her. “You’re nuts, all right. A little supper sure went a long way.”

She let out a deep-throated laugh and picked up her coat. “Home time, big man, and I can get my own cab.”

He put down his glass and walked her to the door. She slipped into the coat he held, belted it and turned around. When he kissed her he tried to be just saying good night and thanks for the evening and all the maid work, but the tourniquet was coming undone and the fire was starting to rage and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to put it out, so he said, “Now I haven’t got any more excuses to lure you back.”

“You’ll think of something,” Helen told him. She squeezed his hand and gave him an impish look. “Or maybe I will,” she added.

When he heard the elevator doors close he went back inside and finished his drink, annoyed because his mind always sought a devious answer. She was a cop’s daughter who worked for the syndicate and she had done him a favor. But had he done her one too without knowing it?

He opened the drawers of his desk where she had dusted. Nothing seemed out of place. His notepad and wallet on the end table had been pushed back to make room for a coaster for his glass. He couldn’t tell if they had been looked at. He thought again and looked at the hidden compartment where the armament was stored. Everything was in place.

There had been nothing in the metal waste basket in the kitchen except the papers he had burned and the empty milk carton he had thrown in later. He should have checked to make sure everything had burned fully, but he had had to leave and had forgotten about it. There really wasn’t that much to bother about, but the metal waste can had been emptied anyway.

It could have been simple habit. It could have been something else.

Gill undressed and went to bed, lying there on the cool sheets, his hands folded under his head while he let his mind ramble in idle thought around the bits and pieces that made up the scramble they called a world.

In the Brooklyn garage loft Slick Kevin hung up the phone and turned to the Frenchman. “He did two raps for auto theft and assault with a deadly weapon. Got out eight years ago and nothing on him since.”

Verdun nodded slowly and looked at the quaking figure still tied in the chair. A bachelor who lived in Jersey and could have other phony Jersey identities. His boss vouched for him and he made a good living, but he made up his own schedule, didn’t have to account for his itinerary as long as the orders came in and had an expense account so low it had to be honest in view of the profits and nobody ever asked for confirmation. He had been in two of the places at the right time, now all they had to do was push a little.

“Get to work on him,” he told Shatzi and Bingo.

Shatzi grinned, poured a half can of starter fluid over the charcoal in the pail and set fire to it. When it was going good he slid the irons and the pincers under the briquettes and lit a cigar. Bingo started ripping the clothes off the bound figure and wrinkled his nose in disgust. Between the shit and the piss fright, he stunk like hell.

Frank Verdun and Slick Kevin went downstairs and got in the car. They’d know about it when he talked. Meanwhile, everybody knew what the orders were and all they could do was wait. Only business routine could make the Frenchman tired. When it was time to kill he could stay awake and alert for days at a time. He yawned, ready for a good night’s sleep.

Maybe, Gill thought. It was a probability that couldn’t be overlooked. They had handed her the dirty end of the stick and it was her syndicate friends who took her off the hook. She was a woman and women can carry a big hate a long time. They could even nurse a little hate until it got bigger than it deserved to be. They could have strange loyalties, like a whore to a pimp who took her money and slapped her silly anyway. Maybe handing him that photo was a sucker trap and her want a chance to go through his effects.

If the probability was an actuality he’d know about it soon enough. He wasn’t that dumb even though his cock wasn’t too bright. He could still picture her in the shower. He put the thought out of his mind and went to sleep.

In the hotel suite the phone jarred Frank Verdun awake. He cursed, picked up the receiver and snarled, “Yeah?”

“It’s Shatzi, Mr. Verdun.”

“Watch what you’re saying.”

“Sure. Just wanted to tell you that we couldn’t open up that new account. It looked good, and if there was anything to buy, we would’ve got it.”

“What happened?”

“The account decided to cancel out himself.”

“Okay, dump it,” he said, then hung up and went back to sleep.