The Last Cop Out

6

The previous night’s mist had been the overture for a cold front overrunning the East Coast. A driving rain drenched the city, whose towering buildings had their tops clipped off at the twentieth-story level by a lead-gray cloud layer. Cars drove with their lights on and pedestrians fought to hug the sides of the buildings. As usual at times like that, no empty cruising cabs and if one did stop to disgorge a passenger, the city syndrome of bad manners was at its best in the concerted rush to commandeer the taxi. Women might have thought they were equal, but a guy was always bigger and faster in getting to the door and could snarl back the insults as fast as their luckless sisters could give them.

Going downtown, Gill had a half-empty subway car to himself. He got off, fought the rain to Captain Long’s office, tossed his wet raincoat and hat on a bench and went in where the Captain and Robert Lederer were waiting for him.

“Lousy day, but good morning anyway,” he said.

Lederer looked up from the folder he was studying and nodded curtly. Bill Long said, “Coffee?”

“Just had some.” He pulled a chair over and sat down. When the assistant district attorney finished his reading he closed the folder and looked up. Gill tossed the photo on his desk. “Take a look,” he said.

Lederer only glanced at it a moment. The annoyance showed on his face and in the tone of his voice. “You know we’ve issued these to all our investigative personnel. If you called me all the way down here...”

The captain said, “Let me see that,” and took it out of Lederer’s hands. He spotted it right away and handed it back.

“It’s a copy of one of ours.”

It took a few seconds for the implication to sink in. Lederer ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, his lips pursed.

“Who had it?”

“The other side’s got them handed out,” Gill answered.

“They’re looking for the same guy, so it means you have a big leak in your own wall, buddy. What else do they know?”

“That’s hard to believe.”

“Oh, crap!” Gill spat out. “What the fuck do you use for brains?”

“Now, listen, Burke...”

“If you take that attitude, go screw yourself. You got an organization with an active hand inside of every big city government in the country who can call the shots in a political election or into somebody’s head and you find it hard to believe. There’s a gang war going on, narcotics turning citizens into corpses, businesses going bust because they can’t keep up with the planned thievery and I have to listen to that shit.”

Bill Long held up his hand. “Okay, tiger. I know the score. We’ve only put these out on a limited basis and it shouldn’t be too hard to run down. Why the sweat?”

“This is an old hand showing,” Gill told him. “It’s not going to be that easy.”

“So?”

“I want to know how old that hand is.”

Lederer didn’t like what he was getting at and frowned.

“Like a couple of years, maybe?”

“At least,” Gill agreed.

“I hope you’re not wasting a lot of time,” the captain said.

“No time’s being wasted. You always have to start at the beginning.”

“Mr. Burke...”

Gill looked over at Lederer. “What?”

“Our office has very efficiently and very systematically compiled a great deal of information on the syndicate operation in the past few weeks. It has done so without any help from you at all, in view of the fact that you were specifically recruited to add your supposed store of knowledge to our own. So far you have contributed nothing except this.” He tapped the picture with a forefinger, his face grim and accusing.

Burke’s face held no expression at all. It was the kind of face too many people had wondered about when they lay there hurting, and a lot of others were forced to talk to whether it was safe or not because they couldn’t read what was behind it. After a moment, Gill said, “Let me know when all that efficiency turns into evidence and convictions, Mr. Lederer. When you get that leak plugged up maybe I’ll add to your information. Meanwhile I’ll just work my end of the deal we made.”

Lederer didn’t feel capable of arguing against the face that stared at him. He never did feel comfortable inside a police building. There was something about the cold colors, the odd smell and indescribable mien of men who chose to work in an area of crime that reminded him of when he was a college freshman. But he was fortunate then that he had had a rich and influential family. He got up and took his coat off the rack, shook hands with the captain, barely nodded at Gill Burke and left.

“You sure like to rub that guy,” Long said.

“If he’s lucky, in ten years he’ll get some sense. What about that picture?”

“That isn’t the only incident.”

“Any leads?”

“No, but a few ideas.”

“How about the guy in the photo?”

“Our expert in the lab is willing to bet the whole thing was a disguise. There’s even a chance he knew the camera was there and let the picture get taken to throw us off.”

“Clever,” Gill said.

“Not really,” Long told him. “It was pretty sophisticated equipment and the next shot in the sequence took an automatic magnified shot that brought out some detail we might be able to focus on. Scientific advancement is getting to be pretty damn incredible.”

“Legwork is a lot better.”

“Only when you have the time, buddy. Right now we haven’t much of it. This morning we found a body in the middle of Prospect Park that had been worked over until it was a disgusting mess, but originally it could have fit the description of that man in the photo.”

“Got a make on him?”

“No trouble at all. He was a former con who had gone straight. For six years he had been making furniture, then switched over to selling upholstery fabrics.” Long picked up the photo and looked at it again. “This makes a little sense now.”

“How?”

“The odd thing about the corpse was its right hand. There was ink smeared on the fingertips. Apparently somebody took his prints and checked out his I.D. The same person could have lifted this picture and used our files.”

“You releasing the picture to the papers?”

“Might as well now,” Long said. The phone rang and he picked it up, listened and growled, “Send him up.” When he cradled the receiver he told Gill, “Corrigan’s on his way in. He’s a detective with the Fourth now. Don’t waste too much of his time. If you need me I’ll be down the hall.”

Burke nodded so-long, lit a cigarette and had taken his second drag on it when the cop in the civvies walked in. Gill said, “Hi, have a seat.”

Jimmie Corrigan tossed his hat on the desk and sat down.

“What’s up, Mr. Burke?”

“How’s your memory?”

“Good enough.”

“Remember Ted Proctor?”

The cop’s head snapped around. “No way to forget that, is there? He was the first, and I hope the last. Killing somebody doesn’t leave a nice taste.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Corrigan flushed and turned his eyes away. Gill Burke’s history was very clear in his mind.

“Tell me about that night,” Gill asked him.

“It’s all in the report, Mr. Burke.”

“I know. I read them. Now I want to hear you tell me about it.”

“Well, I was an hour from coming off duty. I had called in from the box, crossed over to the south side of the street and continued west.”

“On schedule?”

“A few minutes early, I suppose. It was cold as hell that night and I was figuring on a hot cup of coffee in Gracie’s Diner at the end of the beat. The Chinaman’s laundry and the pawnshop were open and...”

“Any incidents?”

Corrigan thought back and shrugged. “I checked an alley out when I heard a garbage can go over. It was a dog. Right after that some half-lit broad stopped to tell me what a son of a bitch her boy friend was because he had another woman in his apartment when she had helped him buy the furniture.”

“Many people on the street?”

“Too cold. I saw a couple, that’s all.”

“Where were you when you were talking to the dame?”

“By the doorway of the grocery store.”

“Lights on?”

“Nope. The place was dark.”

“Then if Proctor entered the pawnshop then he couldn’t have seen you.”

“Guess so. I didn’t see him go in, either.”

“Okay, go on.”

“So I told the woman to forget about it and she left. I went on up the street. When I got to the pawnshop I looked in and saw the owner standing there with his hands up and Proctor facing him. I pulled my own gun out and went in right then and told the guy to drop his weapon, but instead he swung around with the gun in his hand and I thought sure as hell he was going to start shooting and I shot him.”

“He say anything?”

“No, but he sure had a crazy look on his face.”

“Describe it?”

Corrigan squinted and shrugged, “Been a couple of years, Mr. Burke. I can still see that expression but the only way I can describe it is crazy. Believe me, it was all so damn fast you really can’t tell what’s happening. You just react and hope you did the right thing.”

“You did.”

“I wish I could be sure.”

“What makes you doubt it?”

The cop rubbed his hands together, his eyes trying to peer at a dim, indistinguishable picture in his mind. “You know,” he said, “I try not to, but I keep seeing that whole damn thing over and over again. I even dream about it. There was something there that just wasn’t right and I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it was.”

“Don’t you think the follow-up would have spotted it?”

“I keep telling myself so,” Corrigan said. “Anything else?”

“No, I guess that’s all.”

“I thought that was a closed case, Mr. Burke.”

“That’s what the sign says,” Gill told him, “but sometimes closed cases just make room for new ones.”

Corrigan said, “That’s life,” shook hands and left.

Over in records, Sergeant Schneider took Burke back to the files and found the packet he requested. He spread the contents out on the table and said, “There it is. Not much, but we didn’t need much.” He pulled out photos of three bullets that had taken a life and pointed out the configurations on the enlargements that showed they all came from the same gun, then moved over another verifying the groove marks from the murder weapon. “I wish they were all that easy,” he said.

Burke picked up the composite showing the prints lifted from the murder weapon. They clearly matched those taken from the body of Proctor. Schneider pointed out the similarities with expert ease.

“We were lucky here,” he said. “The usual crosshatched walnut stock had been replaced with a clear plastic that picked up those three beautiful prints. The rest were smudged, but even then it didn’t matter. The gun was lying right under him where he fell.”

Burke jammed his cigarette out in an ash tray, his finger flicking against the photo. “What’s wrong with this, Al?”

Schneider took it out of his fingers, studied it and gave it back to him. “Nothing. It’s beautiful.”

“There’s something wrong.”

“Like hell.”

“Maybe we’re just stupid.”

“You don’t make sergeant being stupid,” Schneider told him. “What more do you want?”

“Be damned if I know.”

“Why don’t you just leave it alone, Gill?”

“Because I don’t like to think of myself as being stupid,” he said. He looked at his watch and it was closing in on two o’clock.

Just then Trent came in with an eight-by-ten color print and held it out for Schneider to file along with the typed report. “Want to see a beauty? It’s the guy they found in Prospect Park.”

Sergeant Schneider didn’t mind the black-and-whites, but those damned color photographs they were sending down these days made him sick, especially when they were of entrails, mutilated glands and torn flesh. He gagged, and when Burke said, “Let me see that,” he was glad to give it to him.

“Who’s handling this?” Burke asked Trent after a minute’s scrutiny.

“Peterson.”

He pointed to an area in the picture where a gaping wound had been gouged into the corpse’s belly. “Tell him to check the Minneapolis and Denver files for an M.O. Go back about ten years. Two of the Caprini clowns from the Chicago family were rubbed out by a hit man who liked to tear out belly buttons.”

“Why the hell would he do that?” Trent asked.

“Maybe he ate them,” Gill said.

Schneider gagged again. Gill laughed and left.

The answering service told him he had had a call from a Mr. Willie Armstrong who didn’t leave a number, and after he thanked the operator he fished another dime out of his pocket and dialed the apartment on Lenox Avenue.

When he heard the rumbling hello, he said, “Gill here, Junior, I got your message.”

“Where are you?”

“Phone booth. What’s up?”

“If you want Henry Campbell hell talk to you but it’ll cost.”

“No sweat.”

“I promised him no heat.”

“Deal.”

“He ain’t no boy, bossman, and you can bet he’s covered. If there’s any kickback I’ll be the sucker.”

“Junior,” Gill told him, “right now I’d like to kick your black ass for that remark.”

He heard his friend chuckle on the other end of the line. “Sorry, buddy. It’s been a long time since we lived in the same foxhole.”

“Forget it, ape. Where do we meet?”

“You remember where Perry Chops met his just reward?”

“Exactly.”

“Right there at ten P.M.” Junior Armstrong chuckled again. “And see heah, boy. Don’t play the big white hunter. Yo in Black Panther territority theah.”

“Yo bigoted, man,” Gill laughed back.

Perry Chops was a long-dead narcotics pusher who bought it in a five-floor fall from a rooftop assisted by the fist of an irate father who caught him about to introduce his two teenage kids into the screaming glories of heroin. The father had a cousin who had a detective on the case for a friend and the fall became a suicide dive on the books. The two kids made the acquaintance of a leather belt on bare asses and both went on to be city firemen with great respect for the parent they regarded as a slob and greater respect for the second cousin and the cop who held them in position while they learned the truth of life the leathery way.

The street hadn’t changed any, the buildings were just as dilapidated and the eyes that looked at him as he parked the car just as suspicious as ever. For a white man to be there at all, far less alone, meant he packed so much power that nobody had better touch anything until it was all spelled out loud and clear and they knew the score.

He locked the car and went up the steps, not even bothering to look at the pair in tailored suits wearing the cocked berets. The tenement was quiet, without the usual odors he knew so well. Too many times Gill had been up and down buildings like this and he didn’t have to be shown the way.

Another pair stepped aside at the first-floor landing and three more were waiting at the fourth. One blocked his way with youthful arrogance and said, “You packing any heat, mister?”

Even in the dim light, the kid could feel his eyes before he actually saw them. “You’re damn right I am,” Gill told him and went on by to the roof. Nobody tried to stop him.

Henry Campbell was an old, old young man who had packed a dozen lifetimes into one and had been worn down by them. He didn’t own enough hair to merit the Afro style he kept it in and for a moment Gill didn’t recognize him. He was thinner and some place he had lost a front tooth and the pinky on his left hand.

“Hello, Henry.”

“Knock it off. You can call me Mr. Campbell.” His voice was strictly New York.

“Fuck yourself. You know my first name,” Gill said.

Light flashed on the teeth with the gap that showed through his smile. “Don’t nothin’ intimidate you frigging cops?”

“Nope.”

“Like my boys downstairs?”

“Didn’t get to meet any of them on a personal basis.”

“One day you will.”

“As long as it’s not on business.”

“Man, you’re somethin’. I didn’t figure you’d show.”

“Like hell you didn’t. This isn’t the best night in the world to be alone on a rooftop.”

Overhead the sky rumbled and the rain was threatening again. Henry Campbell grinned again and held his hand out. “Lay on the bread, officer.”

Gill reached in his pocket, found what he was looking for and dropped a penny in his palm. “That’s what it’s worth.”

He got another laugh and the penny solemnly disappeared into a shirt pocket. “You cool, brother. Maybe we’re getting to know each other.”

“Could be.”

“Then ask your questions. I know my rights already.”

“Remember when Berkowitz and Manute were killed?”

“Yea, verily, man.”

“And you said you saw Mark Shelby in the area.”

“True. Oh yes, true. I said that to you.”

“And later you couldn’t remember and you probably had made a mistake?”

“Just too true, man. You are exact... exact.”

“Which was it?”

“Man... Gill... damn, here I am calling a cop by his name... or would you like it better if I said Mr. Gill?”

“Want me to start that crap too?”

“No.”

“Then which was it?”

“I saw him, man. Big as life. He was right there on the street. You think I’d forget a ten buck tipper?”

“Not in a million years.”

“Tell you something else man... even before you ask.”

“What’s that?”

“You think I’d forget two guys who showed me how they were going to cut my balls off and meant every word they said or the five hundred bucks they laid on me if I knew enough to forget what I saw?”

“That’s pretty convincing talk,” Gill told him.

“And it’s still forgot, Gill man. It’s buried way down deep where nobody can get it out of me because those boys are still big enough to get my balls and without them I am just plain dead, you understan’?”

“Sure.”

“There ain’t no way to make me remember and I’m just telling you this because Big Willie passed the word on I should, so now you’re all told and there ain’t no reason for you to be here no longer.”

“What was Shelby doing there, Henry?”

“Nothing. All I saw was him there.”

“He wasn’t near that office?”

“Not too far, not too near.”

“Going which way?”

“No way. He was just standing there. I never should have said nothin’, but I was young then and didn’t know no better. Them fuckin’ cops made me feel like a big shot until I damn near lost my balls.”

“You working?”

“I got a garage over on Tenth Avenue. Half ownership with a brother. Why?”

Gill pulled out a hundred dollar bill and stuffed it in his shirt pocket on top of the penny. “I’m a big spender. I just got a tire changed,” he said.

Henry pulled out the bill, looked at it and put it back again. “Fuckin’ cops,” he said with a grin.

“Fucking niggers,” Gill laughed.

Henry put out his hand. “Skin, man.” They shook hands and Henry said, “The penny would’ve been enough.”

“I got an expense account now,” Gill told him. “Hang onto your balls. You might need them someday.”

“Hell,” Henry told him, “I need them now. I just got married.”

Artie Meeker liked the hottest Mexican food he could find, so hot that when the waiters watched what he did with the jalapeno chillies, the red pepper and other concoctions he demanded, they made circular motions with their forefingers around their temples to indicate that they had an idiot Norteamericano on their hands who owned an iron stomach and they hoped he’d leave a big tip before he died.

And Pedro Cabella was known to serve the hottest food in all of Cuban Miami because he was from Neuva Laredo where the idiot Americanos loved to wallow in gastronomic volcanic fire and had never seen Havana in his life. Pedro and Artie were made for each other and Artie made the extra miles into Miami whenever the old man let him take his time.

He finished his supper and what was left over Pedro put up for him in a cardboard container to take home and splash over his breakfast eggs in the morning. When Pedro saw him giving the sweet talk to fat Maria he smiled and wished he’d try to kiss her just so Maria would know that it would be like to have her tongue burned off. His devious mind jumped from top to bottom with even better thought and he could picture Artie eating her pussy while fat Maria screamed from the effects of fresh jalapenos in that sensitive area she would never let him explore.

But Artie had a schedule to keep and all he did was pat Maria on her chunky behind and drop a five dollar bill down what open space remained between the two great breasts she carried rather than wore and promised her a real treat the next time he came back. The old man would really flip over that ass, he thought.

He got his package from Pedro, paid his bill and picked up his cigarettes before he left. He didn’t pay any attention at all to the swarthy little guy in the comer booth who went out ahead of him and was still standing there when he got in the car. After the sedan turned onto the boulevard the little guy went across the street to a pay phone, called his number long distance collect and gave the licence number of the sedan, the description of the car and hoped the wheel had landed on his number. Not that it wasn’t a useful occupation. He had free meals, spending money and if he found the right car he’d have a big bonus. He could have made a few more calls and gotten extra cash in the mails, but he was afraid of the eyes that belonged to the man who had given him the assignment in the first place. No, that wasn’t exactly right. He wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t even scared of him. He was downright terrified.

Alone with his books, his coded files, two telephones and the new computer, Leon Bray felt safe and secure. There was four and a half million dollars in the Swiss bank account, a luxury apartment in New York, a residence near Las Vegas where forty acres and eight horses were considered a normal back yard to any home, a vacation spot in Baja California where he could relax with one of the showgirls whenever he felt the need for it and the cottage up in the Catskills nobody knew about at all.

His office was his castle, though. The organization had seen to his every need without question because his was the filter through which every facet of the business flowed, to be catalogued, indexed and ready for immediate referral.

Outside, the elite guards kept his castle impregnable, his immediate premises inviolate. Downstairs the faggot Jan and his lover Lucien guarded the portals. The sight of blood was their stimulant and they were always ready to draw it, eager to enchance their sex life. They were the perfect sentries.

Ollie, Matt Stevenson and Woodie were on the next level where they could command every entranceway and trap any intruder in a crossfire.

On the top landing Lupe and the Cobra were playing cards with a miniature deck because it was always dull duty when they pulled a tour around the castle. They were going to be glad when everything moved out to Long Island all on one floor and walled in with a bar at hand and a cottage available so they could sneak in some broads.

Leon Bray felt very secure, indeed.

He didn’t know that downstairs Jan was covering Lucien with his bloody body, nor that Lucien’s horrified eyes finally knew what it was like to have an incredibly sharp blade drawn across his throat.

Ollie, Matt Stevenson and Woodie never even smelled the gas that touched their lungs with the devastating finger of death. They only knew the fierce spasm that tried to jerk their bodies apart at the same time it reached down their throats with fingers of excruciating pain that grabbed their intestines and pulled them out through their throats. Their weapons made a clatter as they fell to the floor, but not loud enough to alert the others one floor up.

Lupe saw the thing first and since it was nothing like he had ever seen before, just gaped instead of going for his gun, and by the time he thought of it the top of his head blew off when there was a soft plop from the landing. The Cobra almost lived up to his name, spinning with snakelike speed, his body lunging to one side while he tried to identify and aim for his target. The apparition had anticipated him and the second plop took away his gun, hand and all. The third went into his mouth and made a weird painting in blood and brains on the pale green wall behind him.

He took off the gas mask and wiped the sweat from his face, then put it back on again. No reason to take chances. It would be another five minutes before the ventilators cleared the stuff out enough for safety. He looked at his watch, waiting until the time was up, then slid the mask off and stuck it under his belt.

Ten minutes later the intercom on the stand clicked on and Leon Bray said, “The car ready, Lupe?”

“All set,” he said in a voice that matched that of the body on the floor.

The pencil-thin line of light from under the door dimmed, a set of latches clicked and Leon Bray came out, a briefcase under one arm. He used a key to turn one final lock before he turned around, ready to tell his bodyguard to take him home.

He tried to scream, but a vicious backhand chop caught him in the throat and the scream stayed paralyzed in his lungs. He hit the wall, started to slide to the wall, his instinct for survival making him claw the Beretta out of the kidskin shoulder holster he wore. For a moment he thought he had won and felt a flash of triumph deaden the pain in his chest.

It was only the briefest of flashes. The other hand that wrapped around his was too strong and it turned the Beretta in against his sternum and the twisting motion forced his own finger to squeeze off the leaden pellet that penetrated bone and flesh, hit his spine and ricocheted through the aorta.

He knew his keys were being taken from his pocket, but death was too imminent to cause him any concern. The door beside him was unlocked, the three sticks of dynamite carefully positioned and a lit match held to the tip of the length of slow-burning fuse.

Baldie Foreman laid down his cards and said, “Gin.”

Across the table, in the shabby furnished apartment, Vito Bartoldi penciled in the score and tallied it up. “I still got you,” he told his partner. He picked up the cards ready to deal again, then looked at the cheap alarm clock propped on the empty chair. “What’s the matter with them damn fags? They shoulda called by now.”

“You better watch yourself with those two, Vito.”

“What the fuck did the Frenchman have to bring them up here for anyway?”

“They got talent. I wouldn’t wanna mess with them unless I had a chopper in my hands. We had a couple like that in Korea. The pissers usta hold hands in formations and made it in the same sleeping bag. Their Looie never bothered ’em. Damnedest killers I ever saw. Regular butchers and they loved it. Blood got ’em all sexed up. Y’know, they both got decorated.”

“Well they oughta called. They’re ten minutes late.”

“So Bray’s working overtime.”

“Bray’s a fuckin’ machine. He never goes overtime.”

“Then call ’em. That’s what they pay us for. To check.”

Vito threw a nervous glance at the clock again and tossed the cards on the table. He picked up the phone, dialed the building a half block away and heard the phone ring in his ear a dozen times. “No answer,” he said.

“Hang up and try again. Maybe you got a wrong number.”

He held the disconnect bar down, released it and tried again. The results were the same. “Something’s wrong,” he said.

They didn’t waste time trying to think about it. They both jumped up, yanked on their coats as they ran and cut diagonally across the street toward the building that had been so recently renovated. Nobody answered the bell, so Baldie used his key and unlocked the door, hoping it was a mistake and the fags had forgotten the routine.

But the door only opened a few inches. He had to push it the rest of the way because of the bodies that blocked the way and all he could say when he looked at the horror on the floor was “Son of a bitch?” He said it again when they stood on the next landing looking at the inert figures of Ollie, Matt Stevenson and Woodie, who lay there with blank staring eyes and mouths contorted in agony, their hands still clutching their own dead throats. The shattered remains that had once been a paper-thin glass container meant nothing to them and they both crunched the fragments underfoot as they went up to the next level with the automatics in their fists held ready to fire.

They saw the body of Leon Bray too, but it wasn’t the deaths that bothered them as much as what Frank Verdun was going to say. They were still thinking about it when they went into the office, hoping that somebody would be there that they could kill that could make up for their own laxity.

Both of them were so tense that they didn’t recognize the smell of burning powder until they got close to its source and just as Baldie tried to yell for them to get the hell out of there the spark hit the charge and the two hoods dissolved into chunks and shreds of multi-colored material mixed with metal and bits of paper.

Ten minutes later the fire department was hosing down the area and the police were herding the occupants of the other buildings to safe places. The only reporter on the scene happened to have an idea of what the building had been used for. He took off for the nearest phone and called the city desk.