The Dead Don't Bleed: A Novel

by David Krugler

  That shut him up. He glanced nervously at Terrance, who was in uniform, then Durkin.

  “Don’t look at them, look at me,” I barked. “We know all about that traitor Logan Skerrill. Only before we had enough to bring him and the rest’a you in, he got himself killed. What a coincidence, huh?”

  “I didn’t kill him and you know it.” Voice steady, surprise gone. He was quick, had to credit him that.

  “Yes, you did. Let’s start with the reason why. Your boy Skerrill got too cute. Went to the F.B.I. and cut a deal with John Edgar, told him he was a Red, he’d betrayed the Navy, but maybe he could make things right by doing a turn as a mole for the Bureau. Some big brass balls, huh? But he knew Hoover’d bite. What does the Bureau care if Navy’s in the dark? Way Hoover sees it, he and his boys oughta be the only ones chasing Reds. And what Skerrill promised to bring in, that’d be plenty to cover asses high and low once Navy found out what was going on. But we play rough, too. Enter Ted Barston.”

  I paused to light a cigarette, see if Greene piped up with another denial. But he was smart, kept still, waiting to see how much more I’d spool out. Concentrating, memorizing everything I was saying. Expecting he’d be relating it all to Himmel soon. I didn’t dare look at Terrance—laying all our cards on the table before the first bet had to be making him pretty edgy. Durkin already had a cigarette going, was staring at the ceiling, bored. Looked like he was counting cracks.

  “So guess what I learned while being your gofer, Greene?” I asked.

  No response.

  “Your boss Himmel’s running a whole ring of spies. Uses the clipping service to hide the pick-ups. Set up a profitable business, use your real deliveryman to courier the goods. Only your latest deliveryman made copies’a everything he brought in.”

  That got me a nice eyefuck, but he still kept quiet.

  “What with that, and all the arrests we’re gonna make, our commander’s awful pleased, especially since the Bureau still has no idea we beat ’em at their own game. But here’s the icing for our cake: we got the guy who killed our resident Benedict Arnold.”

  “The hell you do,” Greene said flatly.

  “Himmel found out Skerrill was walking both sides of the street,” I went on, “so he arranged to bury his mole for good. All he needed was a loyal foot soldier to carry out his orders.” I pointed at him.

  “Uh-uh, not me, you’re not gonna frame me.”

  “Nobody’s framing you, Greene. You’re our man, and don’t believe for a second that Silva and Himmel are gonna lie for you. To get out from under the charges we’re gonna lay on ’em, they’ll roll on you pronto.”

  “What about my alibi for that night?” he asked. Watching me closely.

  Fuck! Fuckety, fuck, fuck! How could I have forgotten to check on his whereabouts!? I was so certain the gun proved he was the shooter, so taken with my imagining of Silva seducing him into the murder, that I’d forgotten to check his alibi. And if he could produce eyewitnesses—trustworthy ones, not fellow commies—who saw him far away from that alley that night, my case went belly-up. What if the ballistics expert couldn’t match the slug to the thirty-eight? Wouldn’t take much of a lawyer to make hash of our—no, my—evidence. At the arraignment alone, Greene’s lawyer could raise these doubts and get a low bail, easy-breezy. Once he walked on a bond, Greene was certain never to return for his day in court.

  “Did you check?” Greene pressed. “Seems to me, if the Office of No Intelligence or whatever it is you call yourselves these days wanted to prove—”

  “Shut up,” I snapped, leaning forward to stare him down. “What night was Skerrill killed?”

  “Shouldn’t you know that?” Smirking.

  “Don’t wisecrack me. What night was he killed?”

  “I don’t know, why would I? I had nothing to do with him or his murder, you can’t—”

  “If you can’t tell us what night he was killed, how do you know you have an alibi?”

  That tripped him up, but only briefly, his eyes darting, still fixed on my glaring face. “I don’t need to have an alibi—I didn’t do anything! I can prove where I was any night’a the week. Tell me the date, I’ll tell you where I was.”

  “We already know where you were, Greene—we checked. Nobody knows where you were, nobody you know claims to have seen you that night.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “We checked, Greene, believe it.”

  “So what? You got any eyewitnesses put me at the scene? What’s your evidence? Know what I think? This is all a ruse, some two-bit trick to get me to admit to what you’re claiming, that H & H is some sorta spy ring. Which is crazy, just flat-out crazy talk.”

  I grinned at Terrance. “Doesn’t even need a lawyer, does he? He can defend himself.”

  “Yeah, oughta save his nickel to call his mother, huh?” my partner cracked.

  Durkin grinned as Greene stormed and sputtered about how we’d better let him call his counsel or else. He was still going when the door opened and a patrolman entered and handed a slim gray folder to Durkin. He glanced at it, slid it over to me. I looked at him, he ticked his chin—the bullet and weapon matched.

  “Guess what this is, Greene?”

  He was back to giving us the silent, sullen act.

  “A ballistics report. We just matched a slug taken from the murder scene to your gun.”

  The color drained from his face. “What? I don’t own a gun, that can’t—lemme see that!” He lunged forward, but I pushed the folder to Terrance, who laid his meaty fists atop it.

  “The thirty-eight we found under the seat of your car today? You don’t own that?”

  His eyes widened behind his glasses, he shook his head furiously. “No, no, no—that isn’t mine, I’ve never owned a gun—you! You planted it! You’ve been driving my car every day, hours at a time, you put it there!”

  “Greene, how could I have possession of the gun that killed Skerrill? We’ve been investigating his murder since it happened. Simple, how that works. First we look for motive. We find out you, Himmel, Silva, and Skerrill are working for the Russians. We find out Skerrill was a mole for John Edgar. Bingo—you, Himmel, and Silva now got an awful big reason to want our fair-haired lieutenant dead. So now we look for opportunity. We check on where Himmel was that night without him knowing it. He clears. We check out Silva, too. Guess what, Greene—she clears. Only you don’t, nobody we talk to can say where you—”

  “Now I know you’re lying,” he cut in. “If you had checked me out for real, my friends woulda told me, no way they talk to stripes without telling me.”

  I stared him down. “You sure about that, Greene? Absolutely, positively? Willing to bet your life on it? ’Cause that’s what’s at stake, a trip to the gas chamber, this was premeditated murder, first degree all the way.”

  “That bullshit doesn’t scare me.”

  “No bullshit, Greene. This”—I tapped the ballistics report—“proves it. We got motive, we got opportunity—with the gun, we got the way you did it. Shot Skerrill at close range and left him to bleed to death like a rat—”

  “Your gun’ll never be admitted. You say you found it in my car? Where’s the search warrant? I never saw it, I’m the car’s owner, nobody served me. Your search was illegal, so your gun—which you planted, don’t think I won’t be able to prove that—will get tossed out.”

  Durkin had stopped staring at the ceiling, was now watching Greene intently. Thinking, maybe this commie’s right, maybe there’s no case here. I didn’t dare glance at Terrance—we had a helluva lot more at stake here than Durkin, and I’d asked my partner to trust me.

  “Know where your car is now, smart guy?”

  “Doesn’t matter, your search was illegal.” Shrugging.

  “City impoundment lot, that’s where it is,” I continued. “Turns out Ted Barston racked up quite a few parking tickets while he was making deliveries and you forgot to pay them. So your car got towed.”

  He started sput
tering. I cut him off.

  “So the thirty-eight you killed Skerrill with and stashed under your front seat was discovered while your vehicle was in the custody of the Government of the District of Columbia. See, until you pay those tickets, Greene, the car doesn’t belong to you. It’s being held as security for the debts you owe the city. Right, Detective Sergeant Durkin?”

  “You bet,” he answered immediately.

  Now I looked at Terrance. He was suppressing a grin, good.

  “You think you got it all figured out, don’t you?” Greene addressed me, his temper in check. “This frame, you think it’s solid on all sides. Nice’a you to tell me your angles, that’s gonna be a big help to my attorney. You think ’cause you’re all in uniform, you got badges and authority and your laws, you can do whatever the hell you want. I’m done talking to you fascists, hear me? I’ve told you to let me call my attorney, and you damn well better, right now.”

  Was he hoping I was bluffing? Or didn’t he care? He had bigger balls than I thought if he was willing to clam up, go to jail, and take his chances at trial. Which were pretty good, though I wasn’t about to admit that to anyone, not even Terrance. Because if Greene could produce a solid alibi, if we couldn’t wring out a witness or two from the Negroes who lived in the alley, the ballistics and my story about motive probably weren’t enough to convict him. But that was a problem for another day. Right now, I had to keep him from calling his lawyer. We couldn’t stall him any longer—I had to convince him to decide not to make the call.

  “Okay, Greene, you wanna call your shyster, we’ll let you. But there’s one more thing you oughta know before you do.”

  “That tired old trick?” He snorted derisively. “I already know everything I need to, all I need—”

  “If you really wanna make the call, we’ll just drop the murder charge and you can walk outta this room a free man.”

  “What?!” he exclaimed.

  Terrance grunted in surprise, or dismay; Durkin shot me a look.

  “You heard me. If you want a lawyer so bad, we’ll release you. But you should know there’s two agents from the F.B.I. waiting in the corridor. They wanna talk to you in a bad way and they’re not worried about your lawyer one bit. Turns out, Section Seven-ninety of the Espionage Act allows federal authorities to hold a suspect for forty-eight hours without arraignment or counsel during wartime if said authorities convince a judge that this time is needed to protect the state’s interests with regard to the espionage.”

  I leaned forward until my face was just inches away. His breath stank of coffee and onions, his cheeks were flushed. Stared right back.

  He asked, “If you’re butting heads with the Bureau, why would you let them have me?”

  “Because we’ve got the ringleaders, we’ve got Himmel and Silva in custody. You’re small fry, Greene, but don’t think the Bureau’s not gonna wring you dry. And because you killed Skerrill on federal property, they can still hang a murder rap on you.”

  “So what d’you want from me?”

  “We want you to think long and hard about your choices here. You wanna take your chances with the Bureau, or you wanna take your chances against our case? We’ll give you the rest’a the day and night to make up your mind, but you gotta do it alone—no lawyer.”

  He bit his lower lip, furrowed his brow. Putting on an act. No way he’d walk out, believing G-men were hovering outside. He knew the Bureau was on to H & H, knew everything I’d said about Skerrill being a mole for the Bureau was true. In a lucky break for me, the mistakes I’d made—not checking out Greene’s alibi, moving the gun from his flat to his car—had helped me convince Greene not to call his lawyer. He’d seen through my bluster about the search of his car, and he was sure he could beat our charge at trial. The Bureau wouldn’t be so easy.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “I’ll hold off calling my lawyer till I decide what to do.”

  “All right,” I answered calmly. “My partner and I’ll get rid of the G-men, then we’ll take you to a holding cell.”

  We scraped our chairs back, left the room. Terrance’s grin told me he thought I’d planned everything out, that my blunders had actually been feints. I saw no reason to set him straight. Like Liv said, keep your secrets blue.

  CHAPTER 35

  SO WHERE ARE THE BUREAU BOYS FOR REAL?” TERRANCE ASKED ME in the corridor, still grinning.

  “Like I told you on the phone, picking up trash in Rock Creek.”

  I enjoyed his What gives? expression for a moment, then told him how Ted Barston had thrown several boxes of newspaper clippings off the Taft Bridge after proclaiming them to be stolen documents. Terrance’s guffaws turned more than a few heads: patrolmen, a female dispatcher walking by; even the desk sergeant poked his head in the hall to see what was so funny.

  “They’re gonna figure out you rooked ’em.”

  “Not till after they get their shoes muddy.”

  He clapped me on the shoulder. “Wish I coulda seen Hoover’s fat face when he got that call.”

  “Yeah, me, too. But I had to shake ’em, had to get that final package.”

  He shook his head. Not here. I nodded as he went back into the interrogation room to give Durkin the “all clear” signal, so he could take Greene to a cell. Then we left the precinct house and I followed my partner to our car, parked on the street.

  A pleasant May day, clouds rolling across a powder blue sky, light breeze teasing the budding leaves on the trees lining the sidewalk. We left the windows rolled down, lit up.

  “So?” Terrance asked.

  “‘Yes.’”

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes. That’s all the message said, the word ‘yes.’”

  “You gotta be shitting me.”

  “Nope.”

  “What’d he say when you gave it to him, Himmel?”

  “Nothing. Said I did a good job, then gave me grief for bringing the Bureau down on the clipping service and fired me.”

  “Think he’s on to you?”

  “If he was, would he’a let me fetch this last envelope?”

  “What if it’s a decoy?”

  “Could be.” I told him how I thought Himmel hadn’t expected me to shake the Bureau’s tail, that he’d expected me to get picked up.

  He listened, brooding, dragging hard on his cigarette. “Something’s not right, Ellis. This Himmel, he seems awful relaxed for a Red about to lose his spies. Why wasn’t he in the wind the second you told him the Bureau had picked you up?”

  “Because he needed this last delivery.”

  “For a message that just says ‘Yes’? Doesn’t add up.”

  My partner was right but now wasn’t the time to fix our math. “Let’s forget about Himmel for a second,” I said. “What d’you and the old man have on the other messages I brought in? The schematic from the X-ray expert and the postcard about New Mexico?”

  He exhaled smoke. “Paslett’s due to get reports back on ’em any minute. Otherwise, we know about the same as when we talked last time. What we got down there, in New Mexico—very hush-hush, very secret, m’sure it’s a weapons project, but what exactly, I don’t know, Paslett doesn’t either. My guess, it’s our version a’the V-2.”

  As in the V-2 rocket, the unmanned, guided bombs the Germans had lobbed at Britain in their dying days. The Nazis were now one-day down, but you could bet your last dollar we were still scrambling—as were the Russians—to build our own rockets. Except:

  “How do X-rays fit in? Or this uranium you mentioned before?”

  “How the hell would I know, I’m no goddamned Einstein.”

  “Awright, forget the weapon, here’s what I think Himmel’s up to. He’s calm, he’s not worried because he’s already got almost everything he needs to give to the Russians. God only knows how much he passed on before I showed up, but figure what I delivered was the last of it. So he’s done, he’s out—he’s never going back to K Street again.”

  “Doesn’t care about Greene o
r that Silva broad.”

  “Right—let ’em take the rap, what does he care? Everybody’s expendable to the Reds.”

  “Okay, okay, that’s why Himmel ordered Greene to kill Skerrill—he wanted us to investigate and arrest the shooter.” He snapped his fingers. “Bingo! Just like that, Himmel’s taken care’a his mole and found a patsy.”

  “Right! See, another thing is—I didn’t tell you this on the phone—is I think Himmel told Silva to get lovey-dovey with Greene to get him to do Skerrill. Greene’s got the hots bad for Silva, wouldn’ta been hard for her to sweet-talk him into it.”

  “Which means we can arrest Silva as an accessory. There’s another problem taken care of for Himmel.”

  “S’long as Greene decides to face the murder rap. Which I bet he will—he thinks he can beat it at trial. Hell, he’s still trying to be a loyal Red, right—that’s why he won’t take his chances with the Bureau. Wants to protect the spy ring at all costs. What the dumb bastard doesn’t realize is, he is gonna protect Himmel—but it’s gonna put him and Silva in prison to do it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, this makes a lot more sense.” An urgent look. “Where is Himmel—he still at the library? Jesus, we gotta pick him up before he runs.”

  “For what? We got nothing to hold him on. We got nothing to prove he passed anything to the Russians. We need to know how he meets with—”

  “We can arrest him for Skerrill’s murder, same as Greene.”

  “With Greene we got the gun—Himmel, we got nothing.”

  “Awright, let’s pick him up for receiving stolen documents. That X-ray drawing you brought in from the National Bureau of Standards—that’s a crime, taking classified plans, more than enough to hold him.”

  “Except he didn’t receive a stolen blueprint, just a drawing anyone could’ve made. No markings on that sheet, nothing to prove it came from a government agency. Himmel’s lawyer would have him out in no time.”

  “For chrissake, Ellis, you wanna help me figure this out then!” Face red, frustrated.