The Last Cop Out Read online

  “Don’t jeopardize yourself on his account, Captain. You know he deliberately withheld evidence on the Berkowitz and Manute murders.”

  “Why would he cover for two dead guys who made dirty movies? You could see better stuff in any Times Square sex joint than those stags they were turning out. We confiscated the whole lot and identified every last man and woman who did the bits and there wasn’t a one worth messing with. We couldn’t even stick a charge on them.”

  “Sergeant Burke could have spoken in his own defense.”

  “Certainly, and have you guys blow everything he was working on.”

  “Police work isn’t a solo operation, Captain, or have you forgotten?”

  “Like hell it’s not, and I don’t forget that either. There are some cops who can get things done their own way and you leave them alone to do it. They never hear of time off or vacations because they’re damn well dedicated to the job and when you take that type out of play you leave one hell of a hole in the line you couldn’t fill with a hundred pencil pushers.”

  “Perhaps we’d better get back to the proposal.”

  “Gill is going to tell you to piss up a stick.” Before Lederer could answer Long held up his hand. “No, it’s not a metaphor. He’ll just look at you and say to go piss up a stick. In fact, he might even get a little more diagramatic. Remember what he said at the hearing? Remember what he told all those slobs face to face afterwards? Now he’s had more time to think of better things to say.”

  “Still...”

  The big cop stopped him with a twist of his mouth. It was an odd smile that worked its way up to his eyes and he sat back in his chair and let all the tension ease out of his body. “You know, Mr. Lederer, I think I will put your proposal to him. I’ll tell him every damn detail of it ... how the D.A.’s office wants him to cooperate as an agent of their department, giving of all his time, energy and experience ... and knowledge ... out of the goodness of his heart and love of police work and abject desire to be taken back in the good graces of a batch of ingrates, without salary or recognition. Then I want to put down his verbatim answer and deliver it on an inter-office memo where everybody from the desk clerk to the mayor’s office can see it.” He paused and grinned at the uncomfortable expression on Lederer’s face. “All I can say is whoever runs your think tank must do it in a pointed cap.”

  When he got done, Bill Long sat back and waited. He watched Gill finish the sandwich, then down half his beer and finally blurted out, “Well, say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “For them to piss up a stick.”

  “For a police officer, your language is atrocious, Captain.”

  “Oh, shit. Say anything then.”

  “What took them so long to ask?”

  The cigarette almost fell out of the captain’s mouth. His eyebrows arched up into his hairline and a look of bewilderment made Gill’s lips crack in a smile. “What the hell’s going through your head, Gill?”

  “Just remembering.”

  “You like the idea?”

  Burke shrugged and finished the rest of his beer. “Part of it.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s call it a sense of ego.”

  “You’re not going to do it, are you?”

  “Tell them I’ll think about it.”

  “Look, stupid, you can fall right into a trap again. They’re caught right in the middle of some kind of crazy mob war they can’t do a thing about and wouldn’t they just love to have a fall guy handy. No matter which way it goes you’ll get screwed. Come up with an answer and they take the credit ... mess things up and you’re the patsy. You’re no cop any more and if you stir up those stinking hardcases you’re dead. There’s no way of winning and every way of losing.”

  “Maybe”

  “Screw maybe. You know the score as well as I do. Besides, there’s something more.”

  “You mean about the Frenchman being in town?”

  Long looked at him a few seconds before he asked, “How the hell would you know that?”

  “Some people I know don’t care if I’m a cop or not any more. They still pay back favors.”

  “Frank Verdun would like nothing better than to see you hit.”

  “Wrong, buddy. So I shot him. He lived and beat the rap. It was all part of the game and in the past now. The Frenchman is too much of a pro to bother tapping out an old adversary.”

  “You know why he’s here?”

  “Certainly.”

  “I suppose you got an idea of what’s going on.”

  Burke’s shoulders made a gentle shrug. “There are several possibilities.”

  “Name one.”

  “Somebody doesn’t like somebody else,” Gill said.

  Frank Verdun listened to the reports impassively. He didn’t appear to be deep in thought, but every fact was registering in his mind, falling into categories and probabilities. There were new faces in the conference room of Boyer-Reston, Inc, this time that Mark Shelby didn’t like but didn’t dare disapprove of because they were faces that belonged to the Frenchman’s private squad, the kind of faces that might have followed Attila the Hun. Six of them had investigated every detail of the killings, buying, forcing and smelling out every bit of information that was available. Bits and pieces had cropped up that not even the police were aware of and now it was all laid out to be studied.

  When the discussion was over the Frenchman said, “No two descriptions match. No guns match. The methods all taste the same and the target is just us. You’re split down the middle about it being one man or different men. That’s no answer.”

  For two weeks Mark Shelby had been thinking the same thing. He tapped his pencil against the table top until he had their attention. “It could be a team trained by one man.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” the Frenchman agreed, “but that makes it an organized operation with a higher chain of command. If that were so, by now there would have been a secondary stage going. So far nobody’s moving in at all. You don’t pull off all those hits and let it go at that. Somebody wants something big and something bad.”

  “What does Papa Menes say about it?”

  Verdun’s voice was quietly deadly. “You like it where you are, Mark?”

  Shelby took the push, but not all the way. “I’m fine,” he said.

  “Good. Then stay fine. I’m speaking for Papa Menes. Remember it.” He paused and looked the room over again.

  “We’re up against an organization. That’s one. They’re damn smart and damn good. That’s two. There’s one hell of a showdown coming up. That’s three.”

  When he stopped, Arthur Kevin said, “Who do we look for, Frank?”

  “The hit men. They won’t be contract boys, you can bet on that. They’re right inside the organization itself. That’s their weakness. All we need to do is get on top of one of them and he’ll scream his head off. We can backtrack him to the day he was born and no matter who’s pulling this crap, we’ll find them and it’ll be the last time it ever gets tried again.”

  Nobody spoke at all.

  Frank’s eyes had a reptilian glitter and he smiled. “Everybody scared to ask how?”

  There was a general scuffling in the seats and a subdued murmur of disavowal.

  “Maybe you don’t get the picture all the way,” the Frenchman said. “They’re picking us off from the top down until they can get to where they can handle us. Believe me, it’ll never happen. So like Papa Menes wants, you stay on the streets and in the open and take your chances on getting hit. You don’t have to make it easy, but you don’t run either. We got the soldiers out covering everybody and even if we lose a few more, we’re going to get somebody sooner or later. That’s it. Meeting’s over.”

  That night they lost two more. They weren’t gunned down. They simply took advantage of an option they had prepared for long ago, an unobtrusive exit with a suitcase full of money to a strange little country where the food was lousy, the water worse, but where there was safety in
a new identity and total disassociation from a world that meant sudden death if they dared return. In view of the circumstances, it was assumed that they had fallen to the enemy who had added another dimension to its method of operation.

  The other meeting three miles farther downtown was reminiscent of kids who were kept after school waiting to be lectured by the principal. There was a sense of uneasiness you could almost feel and the seven persons waiting for Gillian Burke and Bill Long to arrive were still trying to develop statements that wouldn’t make them look like complete fools.

  When they finally walked in everybody nodded politely, took their seats at the table with Gill at the far end opposite the district attorney. Gill gave Bill Long a wry smile and took them off the hook. “Let’s start off without any bullshit,” he said.

  That got their attention right away. Lederer stifled a cough and the man from the mayor’s office dropped his pen.

  “You got yourselves a hot chestnut and nobody knows how to handle it. The computers all came out zero and now you need all that beautiful inside stuff that used to be available for the asking. You guys’ll sure do anything when it gets warm, but I don’t blame you a bit. I’d do the same thing myself.”

  “Mr. Burke ...” the district attorney started to say.

  “Can it, I’m talking,” Gill told him.

  The D.A. said nothing.

  “Don’t tell me you give a damn about the people who got bumped off. Each one down is one more you can close the files on, but when a bite come out of their organization and they close ranks enough to lean on the right people, you start sweating. So now you want me back in again. Okay, that’s what you want and I’ll come back.”

  All the eyes were on him now.

  “Conditionally, that is,” Gill continued. “I haven’t told you what I want yet.”

  “There weren’t any conditions stipulated, Mr. Burke,” Lederer said.

  “Naturally. You’re trying to get everything for nothing. Just don’t forget ... you’re the ones doing the asking, so I lay down the ground rules or go home. Take it or leave it.”

  “State your conditions,” the district attorney said.

  Gill nodded, looked at each one in turn, his face an angular mask of hard competence. “An official position, access to all police files and materials, guaranteed cooperation of any department I choose and no interference from any political faction.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want a salary,” Lederer asked insolently.

  “Being public-spirited, a dollar a year will do.”

  “You expect to take a year to find out who’s behind these murders?”

  “Mr. Lederer,” Burke said, “those weren’t murders.”

  “Oh?”

  “They were killings.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  Burke’s lips pulled tight across his teeth. “If you don’t know, telling you won’t make you understand at all. Now, you got one minute to give me a yes or no.”

  Actually, they had no choice.

  Over coffee at the diner in the next block Bill Long threw Gill a begrudging laugh and shook his head. “Pal, you didn’t say it, but you sure made them do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Piss up a stick,” he said.

  3

  The pair in the anteroom made him the minute he pushed the door open and the big guy tried reaching for his throat while he scrambled for his rod and had his nose smashed wide and flat in a crimson splash so fast he never knew what happened. The other wasn’t so lucky because his gun was showing and Gill Burke broke his arm before almost splitting him open with a single, terrible kick up between the legs. The only sound was their twisted bodies thumping to the floor and the heavy breathing of the beautiful brunette behind the desk. It was all too quick for her to absorb, or to remember to scream and she watched wide-eyed while he picked the guns off the floor and let them dangle with one finger through the trigger guards.

  He said, “The man inside?”

  The brunette nodded, her breath held so deeply in her chest that her breasts almost burst through the sheer fabric of her dress.

  “Push the button,” he told her.

  There was so much weight in his tone that she couldn’t help herself. One finger found the button, held it down, and while the automatic lock was clicking he went through the door and shut it behind him.

  The Frenchman looked up from the papers on his desk, almost frowned, then relaxed with a smile. “Hello Mr. Burke.” His eyes went down to the guns in Gill’s hands. “Are you planning to shoot me again?”

  Gill dropped the guns on his desk, pulled a chair over with the toe of his shoe and sat down. “Not today, Frank. Later maybe.”

  Frank Verdun fingered the guns, turning them around so they both pointed at Gill. “My boys aren’t very good, are they?”

  “Not hardly.”

  He slipped the clips of the two automatics, checked the loads, making sure there was a cartridge in each chamber and put them down again in the same position. “They’ll have to get a refresher course, I guess.”

  “Teach them better manners. They’ll live longer.”

  Verdun’s face took on an amused expression. “You have a lot of nerve, Mr. Burke. I thought you were smarter, but you sure have nerve. Now, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

  “Curiosity, Frank. I heard you were having a lot of trouble.”

  “Nothing we can’t take care of.”

  “You haven’t been doing so good this far.”

  “A group like ours always has a few minor problems. It’s to be expected.”

  “Horseshit. You’ve lost your key men right here and now it’s spreading out.”

  “That shouldn’t make any difference to you. By the way, how did you feel being busted to a private citizen ... and marked lousy at that?”

  “Part of the game, Frank. It wasn’t entirely unexpected, so call it a minor annoyance.”

  “Now it’s my turn to say horseshit.”

  The two of them smiled at each other like a pair of male cats about to cut loose over territorial rights. The claws and teeth were sharp and ready and all that was needed was the slightest move on either’s part to unleash a deadly slash. There was mutual respect, but no fear at all.

  “You didn’t say what you wanted, Mr. Burke.”

  “Just to let you know I’m still around.”

  Frank Verdun nodded sagely, his eyes half-lidded. “Are you trying to tell me you’re looking for a job on our side?”

  “Hell no, Frank. I just wanted you to know I’ll bust you guys wide open any chance I get and right now there’s a great big chink in your armor plate. Whenever Papa Menes sends in his biggest gun he’s running scared and I’m going to be climbing his ass all the way.”

  The Frenchman didn’t bother to glance down at the pair of automatics. His hand hovered over the nearest one and he was almost ready to do what he was about to say. “I could kill you right now, Burke. I have the perfect excuse. All it would cost me would be a day in court.”

  “Not quite,” Gill said. He lifted the hat off his lap and the .45 in his fist was pointing directly at the bridge of the Frenchman’s nose.

  Verdun chuckled and sat back, lacing his fingers behind his head. “I didn’t figure you being that sneaky, not being a cop any more. You know what would happen if you knocked me off?”

  “That’s your second mistake, Frankie boy.” He reached in his pocket and flipped open the wallet so the Frenchman could see the badge. “Times change.”

  The snakelike eyes half closed again. “Don’t try to sucker me, Burke.”

  “It’s for real, Frankie,” Gill told him. “I wanted you to know so you can think about what’s going to happen.” He put the wallet back, lowered the hammer on the .45, stood up and walked to the door. “Just like the good old days, Frank, only now the stakes are higher.”

  The two hoods on the floor in the outer office had messed up the rug with their own blood and vomi
t and were making forced mewing noises as the pain tingled their minds back to consciousness. The brunette stood over the one with the broken arm, her lower lip clenched between her teeth, trying to keep from retching.

  She was taller than he expected, touched with a light tan, a body made to tease or please, yet carrying an aura of class that was just a little out of place around Frank Verdun. The Frenchman had his own peculiar tastes, he remembered, and she wasn’t the type at all. He looked at her again, frowning, then took her raincoat and hat from the rack, put his hand through her arm and led her outside.

  There was no resistance. She followed him blankly until they reached the ladies room, then she said, “Please ...” and he let her go in and waited. Five minutes later she was back, her eyes moist and reddened, a taut look around the comers of her mouth.

  “Let’s get some fresh air,” Gill told her.

  She nodded, slipped into her coat and they stepped into the elevator. He walked her down four blocks, then turned into a grill just off the corner of Sixth Avenue and led her to a booth in the rear. “Iced tea for the lady and a beer for me,” he told the waiter.

  “Iced tea?”

  “It’s easy to make.” He smiled funny and the waiter nodded and hurried away. When he came back he laid the two drinks down and took the pair of singles Gill held out.

  When she finished half the iced tea she took a deep breath and leaned against the back of the booth with her eyes closed. “That was terrible back there,” she said with a husky voice.

  Gill said, “I’ve seen it a lot rougher, Helen.”

  Her eyes came open slowly. “How do you know me?”

  “I was in court when you were a witness for the defense in Scobi’s trial. If you hadn’t testified, that stinking little creep would have wound up on death row. Why’d you do it, kid?”

  She gave him a tired little smile. “Because it was true. He was with me.”

  “Lennie Scobi was a punk hit man for the mob.”

  “And that night he barged into my room totally drunk and passed out on my bed.”