The Last Cop Out Read online

  Gillian Burke sat in the balcony section of the Automat forking up beans and meat pie, washing it down with milk. In all the years he had been on the force nobody had ever referred to him by his first name. Always, it had been Gill, and even The Gill. Now here was another quarter-page editorial bringing up the past, the departmental trial, his suspension from the force because he was too much cop for the politicians to live with and spelling his name correctly and in three places. The writer reviewed his career in brief, commenting much too late that more men like him were needed, not fewer, even if a few official ears were scorched and perhaps innocent if unsavory hides were scratched.

  Gill looked up when he saw Bill Long come over with his tray and pushed his paper aside to make room at the table. There was no doubt about the profession of either of them. The marks were there, inbred and refined to such a point that any aware citizen could recognize them after a minute’s scrutiny, and anyone outside the law could spot them immediately and at a hundred paces. Years of law enforcement, crime prevention-detection and association with the raw nerves and open hostility that fought against the normal society was a mold whose grain was indelible, even to the penetrating depth of a casual glance from eyes that saw more than other eyes could see.

  There was one uneasy dissimilarity though. Bill Long was still there and it showed. Gill was outside the periphery of it all now and there was something in his demeanor like the ebbing of the tide on a low, sandy beach, a sadness, growing deeper with each receding wave. Yet the high-tide mark was still there and you knew that the water would be back again, and sometimes even higher when the storms come.

  “Why didn’t you wait?” the captain asked.

  “I was hungry, buddy.” He pushed the chair out with his foot. “Besides, I’m ready for seconds.”

  Long sat down, took the dishes from his tray and arranged them in their usual order, putting the tray on an empty chair. Gill left, was back in five minutes with another meat pie and a wedge of cake balanced on top of a fresh glass of milk. The captain grinned and cut into his meat loaf. “I would have taken you up on going to 21, but I don’t want to get exposed to any of that rich living.”

  “Balls.”

  “How’s the new job going?”

  “Profitably, pal. Not everybody bought that crap about me.”

  Long spooned sugar into his coffee and stirred it with a clatter. “Forget it, Gill. You lucked right in. So you dumped a pension because you were disgusted with the system and wouldn’t fight it, but a fifty grand a year job beats it all to hell. Besides, it’s the same kind of work.”

  “Not really.”

  “You know how many retired inspectors would like to be head security officer at Compat?”

  “Tell me.”

  “All of ’em.” “And you were just a sergeant. I just hope something like that turns up for me.”

  Gill looked up from his cake and smiled. It wasn’t a smile that had humor in it. It was simply one that had to be understood. “Not you, Bill. You always were the idealist. That’s why you bought that farm eight years ago. You’re all cop and a good one, but it’s something you can turn off and stop being when the time comes.”

  “But not you?”

  “No, not me, Bill. It’s one of those things I hid from the psycho team all these years.”

  The captain made a wry face, went back to his meal again, then paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. “You seem to have made the transition to civilian pretty smoothly.”

  “The job has its compensations. Nobody is on my back for one.”

  “I wish I could say the same.”

  “Problems?”

  “Just this big splash with the syndicate. Nobody knows what’s going on. Six on the slab and so far not one farting lead.”

  “Yeah,” Gill said, “but at least the papers have a cheering section going for you.”

  “When some poor slob gets caught in the crossfire the mood will change fast, my friend. And it’s going to happen. Right now we have word that all the shooters are on the street covering the bosses and just hoping for some action. The big meeting in Chicago last night laid one thing on the line... since the Manhattan end couldn’t clear things up themselves, get out where you can be a target and make the opposition show themselves. That order’s got the big boys working on their own personal shit hemorrhages. Anyone under the red line in the chain of command has to play this new version of Russian roulette or answer to the big board.”

  “And now the department is doing bodyguard duty too.”

  “That’s about it,” Long agreed.

  “A new twist, covering those punks.”

  Long twisted his mouth in a disgusted grimace before he looked up at Gill again. “The only redeeming feature is that you’re not involved any more. Right now it’s distasteful, but at least it’s temporary. If you ever were assigned to that detail we’d all be picking bone splinters out of our eyes and bursting our asses to keep it under cover.”

  “I wasn’t all that bad, captain.”

  “No, but blood never was a deterrent to working out things your own way.”

  “How many times was I wrong?”

  “A few times.”

  “Never on the big ones.”

  “No, not then. You never left much room for discussion, either.”

  “There are ways and ways of doing things,” Gill said.

  “Like the right way, the wrong way and your way.”

  Gill nodded slowly. “That’s the way the other side played the game too.”

  “Sure.” The captain got up, wiped his mouth and stuck out his hand. “You take care. I have to run. See you over the weekend.”

  “Right.”

  At a quarter to six Gill Burke turned the key in his apartment door lock, walked inside and latched it behind him. He caught the news on TV, then opened a mock-secret door in the leg of the old rolltop desk. Three guns of various makes hung there. He inspected them once, nodded silently and went back to watching TV again.

  At eight o’clock he switched off the set and went to bed.

  2

  Until the present meeting, no one except Mark Shelby had met the Frenchman. Francois Verdun was the special envoy from the head office of the organization, a troubleshooter answerable to nobody save the top three men who controlled the vast machinery of the third government and whose very presence left a pall of fear that was almost a tangible thing. In every respect, he was seemingly medium, a nonentity in a crowd, a pleasant sort of person who enjoyed being called Frank by everyone.

  Frank Verdun’s kill record made that of Mark Shelby insignificant by comparison. Administering death was a pleasure he had long ago learned to appreciate, whether done with his own hand during those periods when he decided to polish his expertise, or upon his command when the results were relished through reading the newspapers or watching the report on television. When he was fifteen he had killed his own brother; at twenty his best friend went down under his blade when the organization demanded it, at twenty-five he had personally arranged for a West Coast family of sixteen persons, who had grown too demanding, to be extinguished in a single bomb blast. At thirty he had reassembled a broken European narcotics ring, delivered it intact to his bosses, who, out of sheer admiration for his work and devotion to their cause, had installed him in an eviable position of supreme importance where death became a matter of simple routine to be accomplished quickly and untraceably ... with great material recompense to the Frenchman whose tastes were extraordinarily bizarre and extremely expensive.

  And now the organization, at a hurried summit meeting, decided to take matters out of the hands of the New York chapter and expedite the solution. Frank Verdun was assigned to locate and kill any and all persons connected with the disruption of the organization’s business. Everyone was instructed to cooperate. They were ordered to obey any order Frank Verdun decided to issue.

  In Chicago, alone in his penthouse office, Teddy Shu, second underboss of the Great Lake
s sector, made a final call to the red phone on the desk of Papa Menes who was vacationing in his place in Miami, told him that Frank Verdun had arrived in New York, set the wheels in motion and they should be seeing some action within a few days. Papa Menes was pleased, but more than a few days would make him very displeased and Teddy Shu would be the first to feel his displeasure.

  Teddy hung up, wiped the sweat from his upper lip and told the delivery boy he had called for coffee to come on in. When he looked up the delivery boy had an all too familiar face and before Teddy could get the name on his lips he had no mouth at all because the .45 had taken away most of his face.

  Papa Menes was seventy-two years old, a short, chunky man with a ring of gray hair that circled his head like a wreath. Both his oversize hands seemed warped by age and arthritis, but actually they were twisted because they had been broken that way, one in a street fight and the other by Charlie Argropolis who was trying to make him talk. He would have talked, too, but Charlie made a mistake by always carrying that ice pick in a sheath on his belt and before he could finish the torture treatment, Little Menes had snatched it out and drove it up to the hilt in Charlie’s eyeball. Little Menes had been twelve years old then. Now, at seventy-two, he was the presiding dictator of that gigantic clan whose empire of fear extracted taxes from people of every nation of the world.

  On the street he could pass for the friendly neighborhood grocer. Behind a pushcart he’d seem perfectly normal. In his suite overlooking the whole of Miami Beach and the Atlantic Ocean he was out of time and place. But he was comfortable and one of the preogatives of his age and position was to set his own schedule and one of the items on that agenda was that nobody could disturb him before ten o’clock in the morning.

  Outside in the hall George Spacer squirmed in the divan next to the elevator, worried because his partner, Carl Ames, didn’t want to wait another half hour.

  “Will you sit down and relax,” he snapped.

  Carl Ames fiddled with the zipper on his golfing jacket and stabbed his cigarette into the sand-filled ash tray by the wall. “Damn it, George, the old man’s going to eat us out for not letting him know. You know what he did to Morrie last month.”

  “He was only taking a nap then. You know his orders.”

  “Look . . .”

  “Teddy Shu is dead.” He glanced at his watch. “He’ll still be dead in another twenty minutes.”

  “Chicago’s been trying to get the old man since they found out!”

  “Chicago should have its head examined. At least the switchboard’s smarter.”

  “Okay, watch, we’ll be back hustling broads in Jersey.” George Spacer gave his partner a dirty smile. Two weeks before an Air Force private had kicked one of his balls loose from its moorings and Carl had been hurting ever since. “At least you’ll be able to get more ass than you getting here,” he said.

  “Fuck you,” Carl told him.

  At five minutes after ten they followed the waiter into the suite of their boss, allowing him time to be far enough into his breakfast to take the edge off his usual restless night, and stood at attention beside the glass-topped table by the window.

  Papa Menes dunked his toast, popped it into his mouth and said, “So?”

  “Teddy Shu got bumped last night.”

  “I heard,” the boss told him. He turned his paper over and tapped the headline of the article that carried the story. “A real fancy job. Who called you?”

  “Bennie.”

  “Any details?”

  “Just that nobody can figure it.” The old man didn’t seem too upset and Carl’s stomach started to quiet down. “Teddy was alone, but there were a dozen people in the outside offices. Nobody came in or went out that they didn’t know.”

  “Somebody figured it,” Papa Menes said softly. His eyes were like little black buttons roaming over the pair in front of him.

  George Spacer looked puzzled. “Who?”

  “The one who did it.” The old man took a sip of his coffee and pointed to the phone. “Call Bennie back. Maybe by now he’ll know.”

  Spacer picked up the phone, got the outside line and dialed the number in Chicago. He got Bennie at the rewrite desk of the newspaper, listened for a full three minutes and then hung up.

  “Well?”

  “The last one they remember going in was the delivery guy from the delicatessen. He brought some stuff for a couple of the others besides. Teddy didn’t want to be disturbed and he was on the phone when everybody left, so they just locked up and went home.”

  “Now maybe you can figure it too,” Papa Menes told them. When neither of them answered those black eyes told them how stupid they were. “That delivery guy worked for the deli like a week or two, enough so everybody got to know him. He waits until the time is right and makes the hit. On the way out he lifts the phone off the hook so it’ll sound busy in the outside office. Everybody thinks Teddy is still there, everybody goes home. Very simple, very neat. Call that deli. See if the guy still works there.”

  It took Carl fifteen minutes to locate the deli and ask his question.

  Their delivery man hadn’t shown up for work that morning. The owner gave him the address of the place where he lived.

  “You want me to send somebody over to the place?” Carl asked.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” the old man said. “He won’t be there either. Start packing my stuff and get the sedan ready. Not the limo ... the sedan.”

  “You want us to ...”

  “All I want is for you to keep your fucking heads closed. Nobody knows nothing. I’m going on a trip and nobody knows where or why or how or when. You two are going to stay in this room and answer that phone and say what you’re supposed to say and nothing else. Understand?”

  “Sure, Papa,” Carl said.

  When it was done an hour later George Spacer sat drinking a scotch and water, looking down at the people on the sundeck beside the pool. Until they were told otherwise, they had all the privileges of a king with the inconvenience of a prisoner. “I wonder where the old man took off to?”

  Carl built his own drink and sat down gingerly, favoring his sore ball. “Who knows, but at least this beats hustling broads in Jersey.”

  Neither one fully realized just how smart the old man really was.

  Ordinarily, Bill Long wasn’t given to frustrated anger. He had lived with rules, regulations, politicians, public indignation and apathy, citizen’s committees and crime commissions so long he had learned how to accept and deal with them without having the hairs on the back of his neck stand up out of sheer rage.

  Now, when the assistant district attorney finished his little bit of business and sat back with his fingers pressed together waiting for an answer, Long felt his chest straining against his coat and the muscles in his legs knotting up. “Mind telling me whose idea this is?”

  “Let’s say it comes from higher up,” Lederer said.

  “Then higher up is a nest of nitheads. What makes them think Gill will come crawling back here after all the shit they dropped on him? Hell, he’s got a good job, makes a bundle and would like nothing better than to splash every one of those fat-assed creeps who booted him out.”

  “You’re his friend, aren’t you?”

  “And a good enough one not to throw that kind of garbage at him. How the hell do they get the nerve to ask something like that?”

  Lederer stretched his tall frame in the chair and scowled.

  “His dismissal wasn’t entirely unjustified, even by you, Captain.”

  “You’re no cop. How the hell would you know?”

  “Because you’re cop enough to know that rules are rules. The police department is a public service governed by specific regulations.”

  “Sometimes those regulations aren’t enough to serve the public, either.”

  “Nevertheless. Gillian Burke was a specialist and he kept files in his head he should have committed to the department. Somehow he made contacts and had sources of information
the entire department can’t duplicate.”

  “Now you’re admitting he was a good cop.”

  “In that area... yes. Nobody ever denied it. His attitude and actions about other things was far from being above reproach. In fact, they were almost criminal.”

  “He wasn’t dealing with solid citizens, Mr. Lederer. Whether you like it or not, he got results.”

  “And the department got the blame, don’t forget that.”

  “No, I don’t forget it. I know how money can buy enough heat to get anybody bounced out and nobody asks where that money comes from. It takes money to buy picket crowds in front of the mayor’s office and get people to write letters and the TV bunch to slant the newscasts.

  “Do you really know how close he was to busting up the whole fucking syndicate? Did you know that he had gotten on to something so damn big it would have blown the top right off their operation and guaranteed you guys a hundred lifetimes in jail?” Long paused, turned his lip up disgustedly and continued. “No, you didn’t know ... but they sure as hell knew something was going to pop and beat Gill to the punch by delivering the heat in your direction. They made you guys pull the cork and take the teeth out of the tiger and even when it was over he would have given me what he knew, except I didn’t have the guts to ask him to. A week later when he had time to think it over he wouldn’t have given anybody the sweat off his balls. You made him look like a slob, but when you take a close look at the picture, you sure as hell can see who the real slobs are.”

  “You’re getting out of line, Captain.”

  “Let’s say I almost did. I was about to tell you more.”