The James Michael Ullman Crime Novel

by James Michael Ullman

  “I’d expected an ogre. But actually, I land of liked the guy.”

  “Most people do. There’s a lot of good in Schell and considerable validity to his position. Personally, I’d prefer a wise old admitted rascal like Schell to some of the cold fish at the CGL if it weren’t for one thing: Schell lost my vote when he sold out to the underworld Syndicate. And no decent man can compromise with that crowd.”

  I waited alongside the school twenty minutes before Irma arrived. She wore a flowery blue dress, high heels, and a big hat. Gingerly, she eased into the front seat of Sam Albans car.

  “You look very pretty today,” I observed. “What’s the occasion?”

  She blushed. “We’re going out to dinner afterward. Remember?”

  “I remember. I just forgot you’d have to put on fancy clothes. I hope it wasn’t too much trouble…”

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  I got the car moving. We rode in silence awhile and then Inna said, “Steve, if I don’t see anyone I recognize this time, how much longer do you want me to go on?”

  “As long as you’re willing. But you’ve already been awfully good about this. If you want to quit…”

  “No, I’ll help as long as you want me to.” She paused. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve done some thinking about you.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “Maybe you won’t be. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you, because it’s none of my business.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Well, what happens if you don’t learn about your brother? Ever?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t considered that and don’t plan to.”

  “Maybe you ought to.” She regarded me in a pensive way. “There’s always that chance. And look at the time you’ve expended looking for your brother already. Months. A man like you, who’s capable of building dams and bridges and roads in places where people need dams and bridges and roads.”

  “And airfields.”

  “All right, airfields. You have skills the world needs. You’re not using them.”

  “I didn’t realize you were such a heavy thinker.”

  She looked away and smiled. “I’m sorry. I just think it must be exciting. And rewarding. To go where there’s nothing and build something from scratch—something that will stand for a hundred years, maybe.”

  I didn’t reply. Irma, I was discovering, was almost as good a conscience-nagger as Lorene. This unfortunate development I had not anticipated.

  “I’ll tell you something else,” Irma went on. “The last time we were up in the office I asked you what you’d done so far. Among other things you described how those two men tried to rob you. How you shot one and then hit the other man, the old man. Did you have to hit that old man? Are you sure he wouldn’t have told you the truth if you didn’t hit him?”

  “I don’t know.” Irma was beginning to annoy me. “I was kind of sore at the time. Maybe I should have done it another way, but I’m not going to stew about it now.”

  “Perhaps you’re losing sight of something. Just because your brother is missing, you can’t stop being a human being. Maybe you’ve been spending too much time in those terrible places on Clay Street, with those people…”

  “I know someone else,” I said, “who told me the same thing. She thinks Clay Street corrupts. That if you’re on it long enough, it drags you down to its level. You two girls ought to form a club.”

  “She sounds like a smart girl. Steve—what was he like?”

  “Who?”

  “Your brother Ed.”

  I lit a cigarette with the dash lighter.

  “Ed,” I said slowly, “was an all-around nice guy. He was a crackerjack salesman because he really liked people. All lands of people. We grew up in a shacktown and some of the kids we played with became bums and criminals and worse. But it never touched Ed. My folks gave him something that made him one of the finest men I knew—kind, thoughtful, and brave, a lot braver than me. He was never afraid to do what he thought was right, as so many of us are. Once he saw a man passed out in a doorway. People kept walking by, pretending the man wasn’t there. But Ed crossed the street to look at him. He found a card in the man’s pocket. The man wasn’t a drunk, he was a diabetic, in a coma. Ed saved that guy’s life. He’d help any stranger in trouble and never do the easy thing by turning his back. And he couldn’t stand seeing anyone pushed around. When he was growing up he was always coming home with a black eye or a bloody nose, for pitching in with some little guy being clobbered by some big guys. That’s the kind of man Ed was—the kind of man I’ll never be.”

  “You must have been awfully close to him. To give up your life this way, just to learn what happened to him here.”

  “I wasn’t close to him at all,” I said, “except by mail. I hardly knew him. He was ten when I enlisted in the army in 1944. After that, I went away to college, under the GI Bill. Then to Korea, with the Army Engineers. After Korea I became what some men call a boomer—someone who wanders all over the world looking for new sights and fat pay checks. The pay is high because few men will put up with the hardships that go with the jobs. I’d see Ed for a few weeks between those jobs, nothing more. I guess that’s why I have to do this one thing for Ed. If I’d been around, instead of hopping all over the globe, maybe he wouldn’t have had so many black eyes and bloody noses. He’d have had a big brother to back him up. When my folks died, he was the only family I had left, you see. So learning what happened to Ed—that’s the only thing I can do for him now. All the other things I wanted to do for him—it’s too late.”

  We kept our vigil until a little before eight o’clock. Outside, it was getting dark. Irma could not discern faces any more. The vigil had been silent. I’d brought four cans of beer up to the office, a stifling cubicle on a ninety-degree day like this one. I drank three and Irma drank one. She had spoken her piece in the car. She seemed unusually somber. Me, I didn’t have much to say either. I sat and thought about Ed. And how if I ever found the bastards who murdered him, I’d make them pay.

  I got up and managed a smile.

  “I think we’ve had it, Irma. Let’s go where it’s air conditioned and we can relax. And forget my troubles.”

  “Hamburger stroganoff? I’m dying to try it.”

  “The place is only a few blocks down. But I’ll pick you up in the car as usual. We’ll pull into the restaurant lot, so if you’re noticed people will think I drove you all the way from the bakery. See you in ten minutes.”

  “You bet. Steve…” Irma looked at the tips of her shoes. “I hope I didn’t upset you. I think I understand now about your brother.”

  “Don’t apologize. And adjust yourself. Your slip is showing.”

  I walked out into the hall and downstairs. The hall was lighted but the other offices were dark. The building’s front door was set so it could be opened from the inside but would be locked from the outside.

  I hiked down Harrison to the parking lot and entered the car. I turned the key and pumped the gas pedal. Nothing happened. I tried it again. Still nothing.

  I sighed. I climbed out. I poked under the hood a few minutes with a flashlight Alban kept in the glove compartment. I cursed softly when I discovered the trouble lay under my nose all the time. A distributor wire had shaken loose. I shoved it back in place, closed the hood, and got back behind the wheel.

  The car started like a bomb. I drove along Harrison to a block before Clay, turned left, and stopped beside the fire hydrant. Irma hadn’t arrived yet. I cut the engine and lit a cigarette. When I finished that one I reached in my pocket for another. I glanced at my wrist watch. It was nearly eight thirty. Irma had never been this late before.

  I started the car. I drove to Jackson and turned right to Clay. I figured I’d meet her on the way. I turned right at Clay and drove slowly past the building. The office light was out. Ir
ma was not in sight. I double-parked, thinking she’d walk out the door any second. But she didn’t.

  I circled the block again on the chance I’d missed her. She wasn’t at the fire hydrant. She wasn’t anywhere.

  When I reached the building this time, I parked at a bus stop. I grabbed Alban’s flashlight and climbed out of the car fast I unlocked the building’s front door and started upstairs, following the flashlight’s beam. The second floor hallway was dark. I didn’t think the bulb had blown between the time I left the building and the time I returned. Someone had turned the light off.

  The door to our office hung ajar.

  I pushed the door back. The room stank of whisky. I swung the flashlight beam around.

  I saw Irma’s big hat first. A falling chair had crushed it. Then I saw Irma. She lay in a corner, nude from the waist down. Her pretty blue dress, what was left of it, had been wrapped about her face and head, mummy-fashion. The dress was damp with blood. Someone had cracked her skull hard.

  She breathed with obvious difficulty. But she didn’t move.

  Two detectives flanked me as we walked outside to a squad car. Irma had already been taken to a hospital in an ambulance. She’d moaned when the attendants lifted her onto the stretcher, but she hadn’t regained consciousness.

  A big crowd had gathered on Clay Street. A man stepped from the crowd carrying a press camera. I recognized him as Ronnie Layne, in whose apartment I’d met Betsy, centuries ago. He leered and said, “Say cheese, Kolchak.” The bulb went off, temporarily blinding me.

  He got another shot of me in the back seat, just before the car pulled away.

  “What’s he doing here?” I asked.

  “He picks up his camera,” one of the detectives explained disinterestedly, “and runs whenever he hears a siren. If he beats the regular press to the scene, he sells his plates to the newspapers.”

  We drove to the Clay Street Precinct and parked at a rear door. That struck me as unusual. They wouldn’t sneak me in a back door unless they were trying to keep me from the reporters I was sure waited near the front door.

  We trudged up a flight of stairs, freshly painted a drab shade of green. On the second floor we entered a small room furnished with half a dozen chairs. I sat down on one of them and lit a cigarette. The two detectives sat down. Another detective joined us.

  “How’s the girl?” I asked.

  “We haven’t heard yet,” the newcomer said. He leaned against the wall and folded his arms. “Why don’t you tell us what happened?”

  “I already told these other fellows.”

  “Sure.” He smiled. He seemed the friendliest man in the world. “But you might remember something you forgot the first time. And I’d like to hear, too.”

  “Where’s Doyle?” I countered.

  “On another assignment.”

  “He’s the night commander. I think I’d better tell my story to him.”

  “He’s not in charge of this investigation, though.” The detective scratched his chin. “Captain Ware phoned. Captain Ware is taking personal charge of the case. I’m Sergeant Grimes.” I had heard of Grimes, from Pete Ordway. Ordway had told me Grimes was Ware’s bagman—the collector of payoffs from Clay Street dives. “Captain Ware will be around after a while. But you could save a lot of time if you’d tell your story to me.”

  “Am I being accused of something?”

  “Oh, no. We just want the facts. Everything you can recall. Begin at the beginning.”

  “Well, about four thirty,” I said, “we went up there.” My hand, I noted, had started to tremble slightly. “You know who I am and who Irma is. She was going to look out the window. To see if she’d recognize anyone from the bakery who might have lost Ed’s watch. I stayed with her until about eight…”

  “Just a minute,” one of the detectives said. “What did you bring up to the office with you?”

  “Four cold cans of beer.”

  “How about the whisky? And the dirty pictures in the wastebasket?”

  “I told you. I don’t know about that. Someone spilled whisky around and dropped those pictures in the wastebasket after I left…”

  “Sure you didn’t drink whisky? There’s no crime in it. What the hell, if I was up there four hours with a girl, I might have a drink too…”

  “May I call a lawyer?”

  “If it’s necessary,” Grimes replied easily. “But I haven’t heard your statement yet. If you give me your statement and it checks out, you won’t need a lawyer. But you understand, that girl was beaten, raped, and hit on the head so hard nobody’s been able to talk to her yet. Under the circumstances, I don’t see any reason why you should hesitate to give us a statement. So what did you do during those four hours—when you were alone with Irma Bronson, and she was looking out the window?”

  Captain Ware summoned me to his office at one in the morning. Ware, in civilian garb, was squat, broad-shouldered, and round-faced. A Hitler mustache flowered under his button nose.

  “Siddown.”

  Grimes and I took chairs. I carried my coat. My tie was loose and I’d rolled up my sleeves. I was hot, tired, and angry. Teams of detectives had been getting me to repeat my story for hours. Ware himself had entered the interrogation room once and listened in silence. Finally a police stenographer had begun typing my statement.

  “Captain,” I said, “this charade has gone far enough. For some reason your men seem to think I attacked Irma Bronson. I know my rights. I want the phone call I’m entitled to.”

  Ware studied me. Then he said, “For some reason. Look, guy. We’re bending over backward to be nice. Anybody hit you with a hose? Deny you cigarettes? Shine a light in your eyes?”

  “No, but…”

  “How does it look? You called, we went to this office. We found a dame, raped and slugged. Booze spilled everywhere. Empty beer cans and dirty pictures in the wastebasket. You say you were alone with the girl for four hours. Then you say you left, drove around the block, went back upstairs, and found her on the floor. But nobody saw you enter or leave the building. Hell, man, why shouldn’t you be a suspect? And even if you did go out, you could have attacked her before that. Maybe you were drinking, and showed her the pictures. She got sore and you lost control or something. And later you sobered up, drove around the block, and went back to telephone the precinct. It sounds possible to me…”

  The captain reached for a big envelope on his desk. He extracted a photograph.

  “Recognize this?”

  I certainly did. It was a picture of Betsy, one of the many she’d given me. I’d last seen it among the pile of other pictures in my closet. In the picture, a cheesecake shot taken by Ronnie Layne, Betsy wore a bikini.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “Your apartment.” Ware put the picture down. “A few men and I looked around there earlier tonight.”

  “You had no right…”

  “I had a warrant, that gave me a right. We found all sorts of things. A gun. Lists of business establishments, on stationery with the letterhead of the Clean Government League. Other lists, on stationery from Peter Ordway, a CGL attorney who is active in the minority party. Stacks of personnel investigation reports from a private detective named Max Fuller, including reports on one of my lieutenants, some newspapermen, and many other prominent people, the most recent being Hiram Schell. You are a complicated man, Mr. Kolchak, much more so than you let the world believe.” Ware gazed at Betsy’s photograph. He licked his lips. “And we found some of these. Dirty pictures, like we found in the wastebasket. Do you collect dirty pictures, Mr. Kolchak?”

  “You’re crazy! The stuff in the wastebasket, what the detectives let me see of it, was pure pornography. But there’s nothing obscene about the picture on your desk. I’ve seen girls wearing less on a public beach.”

  “I dunno.” Piously Ware shook his hea
d. “I wouldn’t bring a thing like this into my home…”

  I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. I decided instead to strangle Ware.

  I would have tried it, too, if the telephone hadn’t rung.

  Ware reached for it. He listened and scowled. “Okay,” he snapped. He hung up and glowered at Grimes. “I thought I told you not to let him call anyone.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “Then how come Harry Bagwell’s outside? Demanding to see his client?”

  CHAPTER 12.

  Bagwell wore his pin-striped suit and vest. He carried a briefcase. He moved and spoke with a matter-of-fact crispness I had never observed in him before. He barked demands at Ware and in two minutes we were alone in a small conference room.

  Bagwell waited until the door closed. Then he asked, “First of all, did you do this thing? I don’t give a damn if you did. But if I’m going to help you…”

  “I didn’t do it.” I rubbed my forehead. “But before we go any further, I ought to explain. I appreciate your coming here. But I’m not sure I want you as my lawyer.”

  “You’re not?” Bagwell leaned back. “Who else did you have in mind? Pete Ordway?”

  I looked surprised. Bagwell snorted in derision. “Christ, Ordway won’t help you. The CGL is dropping you like a hot potato. I imagine Ordway has been ordered to dig a hole and climb in until this thing blows over. The only reason I’m here is Lorene tracked me down by telephone and pleaded with me to take your case. Lucky for you, I wasn’t out on a bender.”

  “How did you know about my relationship with the CGL? And Ordway?”

  “I guess they haven’t told you yet. It’s public property.” Bagwell opened his briefcase. He pulled out a copy of the Journal. “The Beacon and every radio and television station in town have the story of the rape, and how you’re being held for questioning. But Nesbitt of the Journal has a scoop. Nesbitt has the rape—and a good deal more. He and Captain Ware are old buddies, you know. Years ago, when Ware was a sergeant, they patronized cat houses together. As freeloaders, of course. And tonight, Ware told Nesbitt what he found in your apartment.”