The Last Cop Out Read online

  “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 fiashed 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.”