Modern Masters of Noir

by Ed Gorman (ed)

  He bent toward her for a kiss, but she opened the magazine again and leaned over the page. “Kim?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “Is it?”

  “Sure, soon as I—”

  “Don’t,” she broke in. “Don’t say one damned word about finding that killer. I’m tired of hearing you talk about it.” She laughed harshly. “That man, whoever he is, will never know that he really killed two cops that day.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Her hand gave a small wave. “Nothing, Simon. Go to work. Just . . . go.”

  So he picked up the car keys and left.

  Campbell was the only one in the squadroom when Simon arrived. The other man’s mild face was creased in a frown. “You look like a pimp on a downhill run,” he said sourly.

  “Thanks,” Simon muttered as he dropped into his chair, realizing only then that the ends of the tie still flopped freely. “What’s up?”

  “Troy, mostly.”

  “Yeah,” Simon acknowledged ruefully, “I’ll just bet. Well, it won’t matter. This trip was really worth it, Doug. I got a name.”

  “Really? I got another dead hooker.”

  Simon kicked the desk. “Shit. Sorry about that.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not your problem, is it?”

  Before Simon could ask him what the hell he meant by that, Dembroski, an eager young hustler just up from uniform, stuck his head into the room. “Ready, Doug?”

  Not looking at Simon, Campbell got to his feet and gathered some papers. “Yeah, Ed, on my way.” He walked to the door, then stopped and turned to face Simon. “Better go see Troy,” he said, his voice suddenly kind.

  Simon nodded.

  Alone in the room, he picked up an empty report form and slowly bent it into a paper airplane. With a sigh, he tossed it into the air and watched it nosedive into a file cabinet. He got up and went into Troy’s office.

  The Lieutenant was bent over a pile of papers. When he noticed Simon standing there, he took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Inspector,” he said.

  “Lieutenant.”

  They looked at one another for a long time, when Troy sighed. “Maybe it’s my fault. I should’ve taken you off the case a long time ago. Or never given it to you in the first place.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know you don’t. Sit down, please.”

  Simon sat, but didn’t relax. “Let me tell you what I found,” he said.

  “What?”

  “A name, sir. Mac. He’s the upfront man.”

  “Mac?” Troy pyramided his fingers on the desk. “That isn’t much to go on, Simon.”

  He would not—could not—allow his enthusiasm to be quenched. “Well, I know it may not sound like much, but—”

  “Inspector Hirsch,” Troy said abruptly.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re on departmental suspension, pending a hearing to determine your fitness to remain on the force.”

  Simon frowned, not quite understanding. “What?”

  “You’ve disobeyed direct orders, Hirsch. Took off without telling anyone. Man, I’ve been breaking my ass to cooperate with you ever since Conroy was killed and. . .” Troy broke off. “I’m sorry, but this can’t go on.”

  “I see.” Simon brushed at a scattering of ashes on the front of his jacket. “When is the hearing?”

  “Two weeks from today.” Troy hesitated. “I’ll need your star and gun, Simon.”

  He nodded wordlessly, setting the requested items on the desk.

  “Simon, use these two weeks to get yourself together, will you? Think about this whole mess, and then come before the board ready to return to work. If you make the effort, you’ll have no problem being reinstated.”

  “Okay.” He felt numb, like when the dentist used novocaine on his mouth, except that this was his whole body. The conversation with Troy seemed over, so Simon left, stopping only long enough to pick up a couple of things from his desk, then walking out of the building to his car.

  The first thing he had to do was get another gun.

  Chapter 8

  The screened-in back porch, long a neglected cubbyhole for disposing of those items with no immediate purpose apparent, but which seemed too good to just throw away, became his office. He spent the next day cleaning it, clearing out the old rake and ancient grass seed, a battered wicker picnic basket, a torn plastic swimming pool. When the room was empty, he swept the indoor-outdoor carpet thoroughly and pulled a discarded dinette table back out to use as a desk. All his notes on the case, his (unauthorized Xerox) copies of every report, he piled neatly on the table. Index cards charting the course of his investigation were taped neatly to the screen over the desk, so that he could refer to them at a glance.

  Kimberly watched his activity in silence.

  At last, he hooked up the electric coffee pot and set it on a corner of the desk, standing back to survey the scene with satisfaction. “Screw the department,” he said to himself.

  She was standing in the doorway. “What about money?”

  “Huh?”

  “Money, Simon.”

  He waved aside her words. “Oh, hell, we’ve got enough to get along on for a while. Don’t worry so much. Now that I don’t have to waste time on all that shit for Troy, I can get the case wrapped up a lot faster.” He indicated the piles of folders and the index cards. “The answer is someplace there, honey. I know it is.”

  She waited a moment longer, then disappeared back into the house.

  The day after that, he hit the streets again, wearing the new .45 strapped under his arm. He started right back at square one. Papagallos’ apartment. An old man was trimming the bushes that lined the front of the building. Simon mentally shuffled through his hundreds of notecards until he hit on the right one. Ralph Ortega, handyman. Was in his basement apartment on the morning of the shooting, and didn’t see or hear anything. Was probably drunk, but didn’t want anyone to know it.

  The grizzled figure turned, shading his eyes against the sun as Simon approached. “Help you?”

  “Mr. Ortega? Remember me? Inspector Hirsch? I spoke to you after Papagallos and the police officer were killed here.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He snipped away a couple more branches. “Didn’t catch the guy yet, huh?”

  “No, not yet, but we’re still looking. I just came by to ask if maybe there wasn’t something you might have remembered since the last time we talked.”

  Ortega wrinkled his face, apparently to show that he was thinking seriously about the question. Then he shook his head. “Nope, like I told you before, I was sleeping. It was Sunday, man. Who gets up early on Sunday?”

  “Nobody but cops and killers, I guess,” Simon muttered to himself. He twisted the worn black notebook in his hands and stared down the block. “Well,” he said with a sigh, “what about the day before? Any strangers around then?”

  “You asked me that before, too,” Ortega grumbled.

  “So I’m asking you again. Humor me.”

  Ortega resumed his work. “I didn’t see no strangers. This is a quiet street.” Another twig fell to the ground.

  “There was a stranger.”

  The high voice came from across the lawn. Simon turned around. “What?”

  The being sitting in the shadows of the porch was surely a joke perpetrated by nature upon unsuspecting humans. The boy—he might have been ten or twenty years old, there was no way of telling—had a face that was nearly classic in its beauty, but the body beneath it was an offense. The huge mound of flesh was clothed in a shapeless garment that did nothing to disguise the form beneath it.

  Ortega snorted softly. “That’s Billy,” he said. A dirty finger tapped his forehead. “You don’t want to pay him no mind. He’s got nothing to tell you.”

  “Neither do you, apparently,” Simon said. He walked over to the porch. “Hi. I’m Inspector Hirsch.”

  �
�Billy D’Angelo. You really a cop?”

  “Sure.”

  Simon perched on the steps. “I didn’t talk to you before, did I?” he asked, knowing he could not have forgotten it if he had.

  “Uh-uh. I was in the hospital. The old ticker gave out.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Fourth time,” Billy said with a strange ring of pride.

  “So you weren’t here when the killings took place?”

  “No.” The mound of flesh jiggled. “Kinda funny. I hang around here year in and year out, waiting for something exciting to happen, and the first time it does, I miss it.”

  Simon, who had his notebook open again, slapped it shut. “So I guess there’s nothing you can tell me?”

  “Not about the murder itself, no. But I saw the stranger.”

  “Yeah? When?”

  “The day before. Saturday. Before I got sick.” He hesitated.

  “Let me tell you a fact of life, Inspector, can I?”

  “Sure.”

  “Nobody pays much attention to freaks.” There was no emotion in the voice, only naked objectivity.

  Simon looked at the ground instead of the boy.

  “Don’t be embarrassed. I believe in calling a spade a spade. No offense intended to anyone. But when people see someone like me, they think I must be mentally deficient—like old man Ortega there thinks. Or else they pretend not to notice me at all. Quite a feat that, I would say. They just want to get away as quickly as possible.” He chuckled again. “Maybe they think it’s catching.”

  “And the stranger? Which category did he fall into?”

  Billy lifted one hand in a surprisingly elegant gesture. “Now that, sir, is an amusing irony.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He was an exception. Like you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The man spoke to me as if he were talking to an ordinary person.” There was a wistful note in the thin voice. “In fact, he was nice. A very kind man, I think. Maybe he didn’t have anything to do with the killings.”

  “Maybe.” Simon tried to keep his hands from shaking with excitement. “Tell me about the man, please, Billy.”

  “He said he was from the fire department. Inspecting for smoke alarms.” A smile crossed the face. “It was a rather transparent cover, now that I think about it. I guess that even if he was nice, he didn’t see me as any danger to what he was doing.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Cards.”

  “What?”

  “I was playing solitaire. An avocation of mine.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Right here. He came around the corner. On foot. He went inside, stayed for about ten minutes, and came out. I had the cards spread on a lap board, and he stopped to look. ‘Put your black eight on the red nine,’ he said.”

  “Did he mention his name?”

  “No. We just talked about cards. I explained my system of solitaire, and he told me that his game was poker.” Billy shrugged. “That was all.”

  “Can you describe him? Was he blond?”

  “No. He was tall, six three or four, I’d say. Slender. With brown hair and green eyes.”

  “You sound very sure.”

  “My memory is exceptional,” Billy said simply.

  “How old was he?”

  “Forty or so, I guess. Good-looking.”

  Simon jotted down a couple of words. “Billy, if I sent a police artist over, would you work with him? Maybe we could get a sketch of the guy.”

  “Okay, Inspector, sure.” Billy frowned. “He was a really nice guy. You think he’s a killer?”

  Simon shook his head. “No, Billy, not him. But I think he’s involved.”

  The boy shrugged philosophically. “Well, he was still nice.”

  “Yeah?” Simon grimaced. “That’s the way it goes, Billy.” That old adrenalin was pumping through his body. It wasn’t his boy, but it was a connection. Find Mac and he’d find the blond. He realized that Billy was watching him curiously, and he pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll be in touch,” he said.

  As he drove away, he could see the strange figure on the porch, hovering there like an Occidental Buddha.

  Chapter 9

  Kimberly watched him dress for the hearing before the board.

  He took care with his appearance, putting on a conservative grey suit and tie. He’d even gotten a haircut the day before. “Well?” he asked, turning from the mirror. “How do I look?”

  “Fine. Very handsome.”

  It was the first nice thing she’d said in a long time, and he grinned. “Gonna bowl ‘em over, honey, don’t worry. Hell, they’ll probably end up offering me a promotion.”

  She nodded.

  He walked past her, out of the bedroom, to the porch. She followed. His old briefcase, from his time in law school, lay open on the desk, and Simon began to shove stacks of index cards and folders into it. Kimberly frowned. “What are you doing?”

  He took the folder with the sketch of Mac in it and tucked it in carefully. “What?” He glanced at her in surprise. “Getting ready for the hearing, of course.”

  She stepped out onto the porch, twisting the gold ring around her finger. “But you can’t take all that stuff with you. You’re not, are you, Simon?”

  He was confused. “Well, of course, honey. How else can I show them what I’ve been doing? Once they see how my investigation is going—”

  Kimberly leaned against the desk suddenly. “They’ll lock you up in a rubber room someplace,” she broke in. “Simon, if you want your job back, don’t do this. Please, for God’s sake, leave it alone!”

  He smiled. “Don’t worry.” He snapped the bulging briefcase closed. “See you later.”

  She didn’t look at him.

  He left.

  They kept him waiting a little while before he was ushered into the hearing room. The Chief was there, Captain Janoski, and two civilians. Simon smiled at them all pleasantly and took his place.

  “You understand the reason for this hearing, Inspector?” the Chief asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Lieutenant Troy has already spoken to us. He wants you to come back to work. How do you feel?”

  “Fine, just fine. Eager to get back, sir, believe me.” As Simon spoke, he began to pull things from the briefcase. The pile of cards and files grew rapidly.

  The Chief glanced at the others. “Hirsch, the Lieutenant seemed to feel that the difficulties you were having stemmed from your problems accepting the death of your partner. What’s your reaction to that?”

  Simon paused thoughtfully for a moment, then nodded.

  “Yeah, that’s right, I guess. Losing Mike kinda blew my mind for awhile. We were pretty close, you know?”

  “I think we can all understand that.” The Chief sighed suddenly. “Inspector, what is all of that stuff?”

  Simon put the last pile of cards onto the table. “This? My records on the case, of course.”

  “The case?”

  “Yes. I think you’ll be really pleased to hear how far I’ve moved in the last two weeks. For example . . .” He fumbled for the right folder. “I have here a sketch of one of the two men involved—”

  “Simon,” one of the civilians broke in gently.

  “Sir?”

  “I’m Doctor Friedkin.”

  “Doctor?”

  “I’m a psychiatrist employed by the department. Could we hold off on all that for a moment while I ask you some questions?”

  “Well, if you think it’s necessary,” Simon said reluctantly.

  “I think it might help.”

  He shrugged.

  “Do you have any trouble sleeping, Simon?”

  “No. Not much.”

  Two bushy brows raised. “Not much?”

  Simon rested his hands on the edge of the table, feeling a thin line of sweat beginning across his upper lip. He hadn’t expected this; he had figured that they’d want to talk about the case.
This was almost like getting him here under false pretenses. “Not trouble, really,” he said. “It’s just that sometimes there’s so much to think about, that it’s kind of hard to settle down.”

  “What do you think about?”

  The guy was beginning to sound like Campbell. “Everything.”

  “The case, mostly?”

  “Yes.” Sweat was running down inside his collar.

  “How’s your appetite?”

  “Okay.” Simon shifted in the chair restlessly. “Look, I want to cooperate, but this is really a waste of time.”

  “Why?”

  “What the hell does my appetite have to do with anything? Or how well I sleep? Or my sex life?”

  Friedkin smiled faintly. “I didn’t ask you about your sex life, did I?”

  “Not yet.” Now Simon smiled, too. “Hut my brother is a shrink, and I know how you guys operate. It always comes down to sex sooner or later.” His fingers snapped the rubber band around one pile of cards. “If you want to know—and I’m sure you do—my wife and I aren’t sleeping together.”

  “Why not?”

  “Beats the hell out of me. Maybe she just has a lot of headaches. I’ve been busy. A lot of reasons.”

  “Do you want to sleep with her?”

  He snapped the rubber band again. “I don’t think I have to answer these personal questions.” He looked at the Chief. “Do I, sir?”

  “No, Inspector, not if you don’t want to.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Can I ask you something else, then?” Captain Janoski said.

  “Sure.”

  “Do you want to come back to work?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m a cop,” he said simply. “That’s who I am.”

  The Chief leaned forward. “Are you ready to perform your duties?”

  He straightened. “I have always done that, sir.”

  “What I mean is, are you prepared to drop this private investigation of yours? Will you leave it to the others?”

  Simon frowned. “This is my case. Look, can’t I just show you . . .” He shuffled through the papers. “I have a sketch here . . .”

  “The unauthorized drawing done by the police artist?”

  He found the picture. “Unauthorized?”