The Last Cop Out Read online

  “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.

  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.”