“And the cop? From Ossining?”
“We don’t have anything new on him.”
“I see.” Clancy stared at the telephone. “I’d like to come up and talk to the warden. Tomorrow sometime. Will he be there?”
“Yes, he’ll be here.”
“Fine. I’ll try and make it sometime in the morning. Or I’ll call if I can’t make it. And thanks.”
Clancy hung up before the problems of the other could be transferred into problems for him. He leaned back in his chair, thinking, his fingers still on the receiver. And then released it and pushed himself to his feet. He edged around his desk, picked his battered hat from its accustomed resting place on top of a filing cabinet and set it squarely on his head. A plastic raincoat was unhooked from behind the door; he draped it over his arm and walked out to the front. The desk sergeant looked up.
“Sergeant, I’m going downtown. I want you to call Judge Kiele—he may still be in his chambers, or he may be home by now. In any event I want you to get hold of him before he makes any plans for this evening. Tell him I’m planning on stopping by his home tonight between 8:30 and 9:00. If he can’t make it, or you can’t locate him, give me a ring at Centre Street. I’ll be with Inspector Clayton.”
“Right, Lieutenant.” The sergeant was making notes.
Clancy thought a moment. “Or just hold the information. I’ll be back before then, anyhow.”
“Right.” The sergeant tore off the sheet he had been writing on and reached for a telephone.
Clancy shrugged his way into the plastic raincoat; the sleeves felt clammy where they touched his bare wrists. Plastic! he thought with a grimace; plastics and the atom bomb—the measure of man’s progress. He pushed through the heavy front doors of the precinct to be met squarely by a wave of good old-fashioned rain.
Tuesday—4:45 P.M.
Lieutenant Clancy came into the Centre Street Headquarters, let the thick doors swing closed behind him, and removed his hat. He swung it sharply, spraying water onto the floor. The collar of his raincoat, snidely awaiting some such movement as this, instantly released an accumulation of water down his neck. He squirmed and marched, face rigid, down the wide hall to Inspector Clayton’s office.
The inspector looked up from his work at Clancy’s entrance; his face, never too indicative of his feelings, softened for a moment to almost form a smile at the sight of the soaked figure before him, and then returned to immobility.
“Hello, Lieutenant. I assume Captain Wise gave you your instructions.”
“Yes, sir.” Clancy looked about for a place to set his sodden hat and then decided that the politest thing would be to hold it. He sat himself gingerly on the edge of a chair and looked at his superior. “I’ll need some help, Inspector.”
“Certainly, Lieutenant; I imagined you would. That’s what we’re here for. What can we do for you?”
A drop of water slithered from Clancy’s wet hair, trickling down his cheek to come to rest on the point of his chin. He scratched it off with the back of his hand while the inspector waited.
“I’d like to have taps put on a couple of phones.…”
“Whose?”
“Cervera’s mother, for one. And the Hernandez girl—his girl friend. I figure that even if he comes to New York to see them, he isn’t going to make any visits without calling first. Or, what I really mean is that he might call to set up a meeting somewhere else. I doubt if he’ll go over to either place.”
Inspector Clayton nodded. “That makes sense. Of course the chances are that he’ll assume we’d tap the phones, and arrange to have someone else visit them with a message. If he trusts anyone that much. However, I agree we ought to try it.” He made a note. “We can arrange the taps, but they’ll have to be taped only. We’re too short of men right now to keep technicians on a tap full time. Is that all right?”
Clancy shrugged. “I guess it’ll have to be all right. If you can get the tapes over to the 52nd every so often.…” He paused, thinking. “Or I can arrange to have them picked up. Where will they be set?”
“Probably in the basement of the apartment building,” Inspector Clayton said. “Or in the janitor’s apartment.” He made another note. “I’ll have the technical boys call the 52nd with the information and let you know. Any particular one first?”
“The girl friend’s, of course,” Clancy said definitely.
“Why so positive?”
Clancy looked at him. “The man’s been in stir three years. If he calls anybody, it’ll be her.” He shook his head. “And that’s funny, in a way, because she was the one who tipped me off the night we picked him up. But he doesn’t know that.…”
The inspector’s eyes widened. “Neither did I.”
“Few people did.” Clancy raised a hand. “Oh, she wasn’t trying to get him in trouble; she really loves the guy, or at least she did. The thing is that she could see the way he was heading, him and his gang, and when he asked her to go for a ride that night, and then told her the car they were driving in was stolen, she wasn’t having any. She made him stop and she got out. And then came to see me. She wanted him stopped before he got into real trouble. The only thing is—” Clancy stared at his wet hat almost sadly. “—he got into real trouble less than an hour later when he hit this young kid over on Third Avenue.…”
“I see.” Inspector Clayton made another note. “All right, we’ll tap her place first. I’m sorry we can’t put a man there with it, but we’re just too short.” He paused, his pencil poised over the pad for further application. “What else?”
“I’ll need more men.” Clancy hesitated, realizing from the inspector’s last statement that he was probably asking for refusal. He plowed on. “I have four patrolmen from the 52nd on the job, one each at the mother’s, the girl friend’s, Judge Kiele’s apartment building, and Roy Kirkwood’s. But just in front, in the street. I couldn’t take any more off the duty roster; in weather like this there’s always a flock of work.”
“I know.” The inspector nodded his head in agreement; his pencil doodled as he spoke. “You’d think that bad weather would keep even the crooks home, but it doesn’t seem to work out that way. Go on.”
Clancy cleared his throat. “If I could have another four—at least that many—I could have them stationed to cover the rear of the apartments, or they could even relieve the men in front, if the need arose. Plain-clothes would be the best, but I’ll take what I can get. Although for my money—” He stopped abruptly.
“For your money, what?”
Clancy disregarded the question. “Can I get the extra men, sir?”
“I’ll arrange them for you somehow, either patrolmen or third-grades. I’ll take them from the nearest precincts and send them over for your assignment. Plus four to handle the swing.” The deep-blue eyes stared at Clancy shrewdly. “Now; what did you start to say before, when you began, ‘although for my money …?’”
Clancy set his hat firmly on his knee, wincing at the sudden damp feeling that was transferred to his leg. He looked across the desk at the inspector; his voice was low but steady.
“Inspector, you know how busy we all are—as you said, bad weather brings out the crimes, and we’re all understaffed as it is. Yet we’re using a lot of men to cover a threat made a long time ago by a fresh young punk, and the standard type of dramatic stuff those young punks love, but the kind of threat we’ve all heard a dozen times before.…”
“He’s a convict that broke out of prison, Clancy. Don’t you think we should look for him?”
“You’re needling me, Inspector. You know what I mean. Every man in the city is looking for those two as part of his regular duty. We’re making a special effort, it seems to me, just because of those threats.…”
“And?”
Clancy took a deep breath. “Inspector, I’ve known Lenny Cervera for a long time. He was our problem at the 52nd for quite a while, him and that gang of his, before this hit-run put him in the penitentiary. I just find it ha
rd to believe that a punk like that would put his neck out.…”
Inspector Clayton laid down his pencil and stared at Clancy’s damp but sincere face. His eyebrows were raised. “You can’t believe he’d put his neck out? Don’t you believe he broke out of jail? Or do you think the warden up there made a mistake?”
“I have a feeling you’re still needling me, Inspector. I know he broke out. It’s just …” Clancy searched for words. “I mean, why would he do it? Why would he jeopardize everything in a fool scheme when his chances for parole so soon were so good?”
“In the first place, Clancy, we don’t know at this moment if his chances for parole were good or bad. And in the second place, the fact still remains that he did break out.”
“I know the punk broke out!” Clancy cried in desperation. “What I want to know is, why?”
Inspector Clayton leaned over his broad desk. His eyes were suddenly icy; his voice quiet.
“Lieutenant, let me tell you something. You keep talking about this Lenny Cervera as a punk. Why? Because you remember him as a punk? Because he was only twenty-two years old when he went into the penitentiary? Because the farthest up the ladder he made it before he was caught, was stealing an automobile? Well, he may have been a punk when he went up the river, but that doesn’t mean he’s a punk today. They run a school up there, those convicts. Day school, night school—all the way through university. Cervera had three years under the best tutors in the game. Do you honestly think he didn’t learn anything? That he’s the same kid you sent up? Do you honestly think so?”
His blue eyes swung away from Clancy, staring at the wall. “Sure, it’s not in accordance with our fine theories of rehabilitation, but as long as we separate criminals on the basis of age alone, or equate a one-year sentence to a life sentence—as long as we put a first offender of a hit-run in the same classroom as a habitual thief, and a rapist, and a dope peddler—and then put a three- or four-time loser, a murderer or somebody like him, up in front of the class as the professor.…” He hesitated, shook his head, and sighed. His eyes came back to Clancy. “Well, Lieutenant, just that long we aren’t going to have rehabilitated men coming out of our penal institutions. Or even punks. We’re going to have a crop of dangerous criminals. More than went in.”
“I don’t deny it,” Clancy said stubbornly. “Everything you say. But Cervera made those threats when he was still a punk—before he had a chance to go to college.…”
Inspector Clayton leaned back. “Clancy, I’m surprised at you. If he had been an old lag when he shot his mouth off, I’d worry a lot less about it. It’s just because he was a punk. You never know what that education up there can do. And there’s something else—you raised a good question: why did he go along with the breakout? He needed a strong reason, and I don’t know that reason. And I’m nervous about things I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Our job is to prevent crime. Maybe I’m wasting the department’s time, but maybe I’m not. I hope I am.”
Clancy remained silent. The inspector surveyed him speculatively.
“Lieutenant, you know what I think of you. You’re one of the sharpest men I’ve got. It wasn’t because you were one of the three men Cervera threatened that I assigned you to this case; it was in spite of it. And it wasn’t because you know him, or his mother, or the neighborhood. I would have assigned you in any case. There’s something odd here—and that’s where your brain shines. Don’t let it go dull on you with any preconceived notions.…”
And that, Clancy thought, is as backhanded a compliment as you’ve received in many a moon. But still, he could not help but feel satisfaction at the inspector’s words. That’s the way we are, he suddenly thought. We suck the sweet juice and discard the bitter peel, but the tree has to live with both. And that’s why this man sitting opposite me is an inspector, and one of the best on the force.
“No, sir,” he said. “I’ll try not to.”
“Try hard,” Inspector Clayton said dryly, and moved away from the subject. His big hand drew his notes closer; he reached for the telephone. “I’ll get those men for you now.”
“Yes, sir,” Clancy said meekly.
CHAPTER TWO
Tuesday—6:15 P.M.
A sheet of cold rain, aided and abetted by a sharp blast of frigid air, helped Clancy to open the doors of the precinct. He pushed them shut behind him with an effort, and started toward the desk. His raincoat, now as wet inside as out, clung to him affectionately; he reached down, dragging it free of his clammy trousers with a muttered curse.
A large patrolman, his black raincoat glistening, stolidly barred his way. “Lieutenant …”
Clancy looked up. “Yes? What is it?” His eyes suddenly narrowed. “Wait a second, Mathews—aren’t you supposed to be on duty in front of Mr. Kirkwood’s apartment?”
“Yes, sir.” The patrolman eyed him evenly. “But Mr. Kirkwood doesn’t live there any more. Not at the address you gave me. And he didn’t leave any forwarding address. I asked the superintendent.”
Clancy shoved his hat back in a gesture of disgust. It was a mistake; water cascaded down his neck. He shriveled and then recovered, glaring at the patrolman, as if it were somehow his fault. “And did it ever occur to you to look in the telephone book?”
“Yes, sir. The telephone book has the same address you gave me.”
“Oh.” Clancy thought about that for a moment, and began stripping his raincoat free. It came loose reluctantly; it was an effort to refrain from tearing it off in pieces. “Did you try calling the number?”
“Yes, sir. There wasn’t any answer. And information didn’t have any dope on any new address.…”
“All right. Come on back to my office and we’ll see what we can do.” He turned to the desk. “Sergeant—”
“It’s all set with the judge, Lieutenant. He’ll be home expecting you about eight-thirty tonight.”
“Good. Any word from Stanton or Kaproski?”
“Nothing yet, Lieutenant.”
Clancy shrugged and marched down the hall, followed at a discreet distance by the patrolman. He clicked the light on in his small cubicle, tossed his raincoat back of the door, and flipped his hat onto a filing cabinet. It landed with a wet plop. Clancy fell wearily into his chair and reached a hand for the telephone.
“Sergeant, call personnel records and see if they can give us any scoop on Roy Kirkwood’s address. Or his telephone number. And don’t tell me he’s on the D.A.’s staff and not the force, because I know it. He apparently moved without leaving a forwarding address. And telephone information doesn’t have anything.”
“Yes, sir. If personnel doesn’t have anything, I’ll try Mr. Johnson at the phone company. He’ll dig it out for us.”
“All right, but make it fast.”
“And Stanton just walked in, Lieutenant.”
“Well, don’t hold him there against his will.” Clancy hung up and shook his head at himself. Damn this rain! Clancy, he said to himself, in wet weather you just aren’t worth living with! He reached for a cigarette; Matthews stood rigidly half in and half out of the doorway. Stanton brushed past him and then looked back over his shoulder.
“Hi, Mathews.” He turned to Clancy. “Decided to get yourself some protection after all, Lieutenant?”
“Sure,” Clancy said. “I figure I need it inside the precinct. What happened at the mother’s?”
“Not much.” Stanton pulled off his raincoat and draped it over a chair. He sat down, straddling another. “You didn’t really expect too much, did you, Lieutenant? Well, anyway, she swears that the last time she saw her Lenny, which was a few days over two weeks ago up in Sing Sing, they talked about a job she lined up for him when he got out—a job with an old friend of Lenny’s dad. Over in Jersey someplace, a used-car lot. They got a part of the yard over there where they wreck cars for junk, she says, and Lenny was going to work in that part. Which would be a good job for the punk, when you come to think about it—wrecking cars. Anyways, she swears he talked
like he was just waiting to go up before the parole board, and that he was sure he’d get off. And that’s about it.”
“That’s it?”
“Just about. And when I say she swears it, I mean just that. She runs into the other room and digs around and finally drags out this big old Bible and she brings it back and puts her hand on it in front of me and really swears on it that her Lenny is a good boy and is going to go straight, and not have anything to do with the gang, and all that crap. I’m telling you, a real nut.”
“And did you ask her why, if her Lenny was such a good boy, he broke out of prison?”
“Yeah, I did, as a matter of fact. But she don’t answer that. She just goes back into the old routine about how her Lenny was going to work over in this yard in Jersey, and wouldn’t ever get into trouble again.…” Stanton’s eyes were shrewd. “Personally, if you ask me, the old lady don’t want to admit even to herself that her Lenny is in the biggest batch of trouble he ever saw.”
“Has she heard from him?”
“She swears she hasn’t, and I’ve got a hunch from the way she said it that it’s true. And she says that he’d call if he was in trouble, because that’s what a mother is for and Lenny knows it because he was raised right, and all that.…”
The phone rang. Clancy held up his hand to Stanton and picked it up. It was the desk sergeant.
“I finally got Mr. Kirkwood’s number, Lieutenant. What a sweat! The phone company doesn’t have it, and—”
Clancy made a rude noise. The sergeant paused in sudden understanding. “You want me to call it?”
“That would be very kind of you,” Clancy said politely. “I’ll hold on.”
They waited in silence. Clancy remembered the cigarette and put it in his mouth. Stanton leaned over with a lighter. The telephone at the other end was ringing endlessly, unattended. Clancy was about to click the bar for the sergeant when the receiver was finally lifted. A familiar voice came on, slightly breathless.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Roy. This is Lieutenant Clancy …”
The Quarry Page 2
