by Steve Brewer
At any rate, that’s what flashed through my mind: “We Polked ’em in ’44, and we’ll Pierce ’em in ’52.” I bet an analyst could get some mileage out of that. Polk and Pierce are both prodding terms, obvious phallic symbolism. Plus the fact that I was about to be Polked and Pierced by a bullet, a bullet shot by a gun, another phallic extension. Yeah, a shrink would have a field day with that.
But I think the real explanation was much simpler than that. I think it was simple regression to childhood. Wanting to be a kid again. Wanting to have no cares or responsibilities. Harkening back to a time when your biggest problem was who was president when. Not how you gonna feed your wife and kids, are you gonna stay out of jail, and will you stop a bullet.
Yeah, that’s what I think it was.
My own version of Rosebud.
Minton leveled the gun and I knew the time had come.
So this is it. It all ends here. Bang. Silence. Darkness. The Void. Never to see my kid grow up. Never to write the great American novel. To die unknown. Unpublished. Unsung.
Unpaid.
To die for nothing, literally.
Some favor.
There was nothing I could do. Dodge? Dodge a bullet? That’s an old expression, one used to describe someone achieving an impossible feat. Escaping in spite of overwhelming odds. That was all I had to do.
Sorry.
Not up to it.
Not even up to trying.
Stand like a schmuck and die.
Oh, shit!
Great. His last words were, “Oh, shit!”
A shadow moved in the dark behind Minton.
The cavalry.
A cop.
I saw an arm go up with something in it and come down on Minton’s head, hard. There was a sick, thunking sound, and Minton slumped forward onto the ground. The shadow moved again as the cop bent over Minton, presumably to remove his gun, though it was too dark for me to see. The cop straightened, turned. Light fell on his face, and I gawked. The cop was MacAullif. He looked at me, and shook his head.
“You’re not getting any better at this, are you?”
38.
“WHAT THE HELL ARE you doing here?”
“Just a minute,” MacAullif said. He was busily engaged in tying Minton’s hands behind him with a short cord that he’d taken out of his jacket pocket. “You gotta learn something about procedure. You secure the perpetrator first, then you talk.” He gave the cord a final tug. “There. That ought to do it. Though I don’t think this one’s coming around for some time, anyway.”
“What’d you hit him with?”
“Butt of a gun.” MacAullif got to his feet. “.38 Special, if you’re keepin’ score.”
I stared at him. “What are you doing here?”
“Savin’ your ass, it looks like.”
“No, I mean—”
“I know what you mean. I just thought you might need a little help.”
“I thought you had three murders pending.”
“One of the joys of being a sergeant is being able to delegate authority. I’m sure my boy Daniels is doing a hell of a job.”
“When’d you get here?”
“Yesterday. I picked you up at your hotel yesterday afternoon. I’ve been on your tail ever since.”
“Why? Why tail me? Why didn’t you just let me know you were here?”
MacAullif cocked his head on one side. “That might have been easier, now, mightn’t it? But the thing is, we don’t seem to tell each other everything, do we? And the fact is, you were holding out on me. And with you holding out on me, I wanted to know what the real story was, not just the version you chose to give me. See what I mean?”
“Yeah. Yeah,” I said. I have a very slow reaction time, and the whole thing was just beginning to dawn on me. “You’re saying you’ve been following me since yesterday afternoon?”
“That’s right.”
“Then that means …”
“What?”
“The cops weren’t.”
“I’m a cop.”
“No. The other cops. The Atlantic City cops. The boys from Major Crimes.”
“I don’t know them. I’m from New York.”
“Yes, but …”
“But what?”
“They weren’t following me.”
“No one’s been following you but me.”
“You sure?”
“Hey. I’m a cop. I can spot a tail. Aside from me, you’ve been clean.”
I told you I’m a slow take. The fact is, I said it again, just to nail it down.
“Then … the cops … weren’t … following me.”
“No.”
I blinked twice. “Jesus Christ!”
“What?”
“I could have been killed!”
MacAullif nodded. “That seems entirely likely.”
I felt completely numb. “Good lord,” I murmured. My knees felt wobbly. “Excuse me,” I said, “but I’m going to sit down.”
I did. I was sorry to plummet so in MacAullif’s estimation, but there was no help for it.
MacAullif grinned. “Ah! The old post-lookin’-down-the-mouth-of-the-gun-barrel syndrome. Don’t worry. Cops get it, too. Rookies and veterans. Maybe not quite so dramatically, but they do.”
I remembered something. “Oh, shit,” I said.
“What?”
I reached in my inside jacket pocket. “Here’s a trick I learned from you,” I told him. I tugged it out.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a pocket dictaphone. My wife gave it to me last Christmas. I’m supposed to be writing the great American novel with it.”
“Any luck?”
“Naw, it inhibits me. I can’t think of what to say. This is the first time I used it.”
I was glad about the dictaphone. It gave me something to do and something to talk about. Something mindless. Something mechanical.
I switched it off, ran it back a bit.
“Let’s see if it came out.”
I stopped it. Put it on play.
MacAullif’s voice came over loud and clear, saying, “Ah! The old post-lookin’-down-the-mouth-of-the-gun-barrel syndrome.”
I clicked it off.
“Came out great,” I said.
“Yeah, nice work,” MacAullif said. “But you gotta run it back and knock off the end of it.”
“Why? Just ’cause I come off like a chickenshit asshole?”
“Don’t be stupid,” MacAullif said. “I’m sure they know that already. The thing is, I don’t want them to know I was here.”
“Why not?”
“You’re bein’ stupid again.” MacAullif spoke slowly and evenly, as if addressing a child. “My name is MacAullif. Why am I down here? The boys from Major Crimes aren’t stupid. I don’t want them getting a lead to my daughter.”
“Right,” I said. “I’m sorry. I guess looking at a gun kind of scrambles my wits.”
“You didn’t have much to start with,” MacAullif said. “Just run it back and erase it.”
“O. K.,” I said. “We’re gonna have to be quiet when I do. The only way to erase is to record, and the mike picks up everything, regardless of what the volume’s set at. So when I switch it on, we can’t talk.”
“Probably a blessing,” MacAullif said.
I ran it back to just before MacAullif knocked Minton on the head.
“Leave in the sound of the blow,” MacAullif said.
“Why?”
“You knocked him out, then you switched off the machine.”
“You think the cops are gonna buy that?”
“No, but it’s the best story you got. And they can’t disprove it. You leave out the blow, and the whole thing sounds fishy as hell.”
I left in the sound of the blow. I switched the recorder on. MacAullif and I stood in silence for a couple of minutes. I switched it off record and put it on play. Dead air. I’d gone far enough. I switched it off and hit rewind to send the tape back to the top of the
reel.
“O. K.,” MacAullif said. “Now, we’re lucky the son of a bitch didn’t mention Harold. If he had, we have to ditch the tape. The way things stand, it’s fine.” He looked at me. “So the son of a bitch I.D.’d you instead of Harold?”
“Yeah.”
“That was stupid. But if he wasn’t stupid, you wouldn’t have caught him. All right. The way things stand, there’s no reason Harold’s name should come up. It’s peripheral and it’s not important. If Minton mentions him, well, there’s nothing we can do about that, but there’s no reason why he should, and even if he does, the cops aren’t gonna pay that much attention. We got Minton dead to rights. So the only problem we got is the felony rap they got on you for grabbing those pix.”
“No problem. I can handle that.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I’m handing them a murderer. They’re gonna let the pix slide. Particularly if I give ’em the pictures back.”
“Most of the pictures,” MacAullif said.
“Absolutely.”
“O.K.,” MacAullif said. “You gotta call the cops, and I gotta get out of here. Now tell me, where do Harold and Barbara stand?”
“At the moment they stand nowhere, but they’re gonna get their best shot. They’ve both had the shit scared out of them. They’re gonna need help, and they’re gonna find they got no one to cling to but each other.”
“How do you know that?” MacAullif said.
“Well, Harold’s little playmate’s on her way home to Salt Lake City under an assumed name. The cops won’t find her and Harold won’t find her. She’s out of it.”
“And Barbara’s friend?”
“Barbara’s friend is out of it, too. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
“O.K.,” MacAullif said. “Now I gotta go. There’s a pay phone on the corner. I’ll watch this bird just to make sure he doesn’t come to while you call the cops. As soon as you come back I’ll take off.”
“Fine.”
“And listen,” MacAullif said. “Hey. Thanks a lot.”
“Don’t mention it,” I told him.
“Can you handle everything?” MacAullif said. “Is there anything you need?”
I thought a moment. “Yeah. Yeah, there is.”
“What?”
“The gun you bopped Minton with. Is that your police issue?”
“Shit, no,” MacAullif said. “On a job like this I carry my own piece.”
“Fine,” I said. “Look. I’m staying at the Comfort Inn on Route 30. On your way out of town just put it in a box with my name on it and leave it at the desk.”
MacAullif looked at me. “You serious?”
“Absolutely,” I told him.
“O.K.,” he said. “Anything else?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Take the bullets out of it, would you? I don’t wanna shoot myself in the leg.”
39.
I WAS FULFILLING a life-long fantasy. It was something I’d always dreamed of doing. It was something I’d been reading about in detective stories all my life. The hero captures the bad guy single-handed, ties him hand and foot, and calls the cops to come pick him up.
Of course, I hadn’t really captured Minton single-handed, but the cops didn’t know that. They suspected it, but they didn’t know it.
Barnes switched the recorder off and cocked his head at me.
“The end of this recordings been erased,” he said.
“Oh, really?” I said.
“Yeah, really. The mike is on, but there’s nothing happening. The recording has been recorded over. It’s been erased. It’s just dead air.”
“Of course, it’s dead air,” I said. “After I hit Minton, who was I gonna talk to?”
Barnes shook his head. “No, no, no. It’s been erased. You can tell the difference. There’s a click. The click of the recorder being switched on when you recorded over the end.”
“Or maybe that’s the click of me shutting it off,” I said.
“And then what’s the recording beyond there?”
“Oh, something I recorded at another time,” I said. “Perhaps when I was working on a book. That’s what my wife gave me this thing for, you see. To write books.”
“Is it your usual practice to record long passages of dead air?” Barnes asked.
“Well, my thought process is sometimes a little slow.”
“You can say that again.”
We were standing near the mouth of the alley. Preston came out along with two officers leading the handcuffed Minton. They stuck him in the back of a patrol car. The cops got in and drove off. Preston walked up to us.
“Clam got anything to say?” Preston asked.
“He not only says it, he taped it,” Barnes said. “You can have a listen yourself when we get back.”
“Any good?” Preston asked.
“Not bad. It fries Minton’s ass.”
“I’m sure it does. So the clam came through, huh?”
“Well, I’m sure he had help,” Barnes said. “The thing is, he erased the end of the tape recording, so we’ll never know. So I guess we have to credit him with the collar.”
“I suppose so. Though you know and I know this guy would have trouble bringing back a runaway three-year-old.”
“May I say something?” I said.
“Boy, the clam’s talkative,” Preston said.
“It’s the thrill of the capture,” Barnes said. “Does it every time.”
“What do you want to say, clam?”
I looked at them accusingly. “You guys weren’t following me.”
“What?”
“When you let me go the second time. You didn’t have me followed.”
“Of course not. Why?”
“You almost got me killed.”
“What?”
“I was counting on you guys following me. I figured you’d be there, backing me up. See, I couldn’t think of any reason why you would have let me go unless you were gonna have me followed.”
Barnes and Preston looked at each other and shook their heads.
“That’s because you have such an exaggerated sense of your own importance,” Barnes said. “And, if I may say so, because you have such a low opinion of police intelligence. You want me to tell you why we let you go? We let you go because you were innocent. Bizarre concept? You were innocent. You’re a meddling, interfering private eye, but you didn’t kill those guys. I knew it. Preston knew it. But you didn’t give us credit for that, see. You think you’re the only one with any smarts. Why don’t you tell him how it was, Preston?”
Preston shrugged. “Sure. As soon as Minton I.D.‘d you as the guy who hired Steerwell, we knew he was the perp. Just like you did. See, the way we figured it, there was no way you and your estimable asshole attorney could be so stupid as to claim that Minton would confirm your story if you knew, in fact, that he would not. So, when he failed to confirm your story, we knew he was lying and knew he was guilty. It was an incredibly stupid thing for Minton to do by the way. In fact, all of the principals in this affair were incredibly stupid. They had to be. Otherwise, you would never have figured it out.”
Just what MacAullif had said. Any more and I might begin to believe it.
“But leave that,” Preston went on. “The fact is, we knew Minton was guilty. So why should we bother about you? We put in the past few days working on him. We dug into his background, and it’s amazing what we’ve established. We can link him to Tallman. We can link him to Nubar. We also got a line on the pilot who flew him back from Vegas, and when we get ahold of him I’m sure he’s gonna sing.”
“So, you see,” Barnes said, “in another twenty-four hours we’d have cracked this case ourselves.”
“Not that we don’t appreciate the help,” Preston said. “Though it would have been better if you’d let Minton shoot you. His murder of you would have been the ultimate admission of guilt.”
“But you did hel
p in your own way,” Barnes said, “and we will certainly give you credit in the press.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I told him. “I’m sort of a low-profile type myself and the less need said about me, the better.”
“Suit yourself,” Barnes said, “but if that’s the way you want to play it, the fact is we probably won’t need you at all. Or your tape recording. We’ll pick up Tallman tonight, shake him down, get these guys ratting on each other. That should do it right there.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” I said.
“But there is one small matter,” Barnes said.
“Oh?”
“The pictures.”
“Ah, yes, the pictures,” I said.
“Yes,” Preston said. “We were wondering if those pictures might form some important link in this case.”
“I don’t know. They certainly might,” I said.
“And there is that felony count of grand larceny,” Barnes said.
“There is indeed,” I said. “Well, gentlemen, I was just wondering. If I were to, quote, find those pictures, unquote, and drop ’em by major crimes tomorrow morning, do you suppose that felony count might just disappear?”
“It’s entirely likely,” Barnes said. “In fact, I’m sure the whole thing could be dismissed in absentia, without the defendant ever having to come back and appear in court.”
“That would be right nice,” I told him. “Now look, if you boys have everything all wrapped up here, personally I’ve had a hell of a day and I’d like to get some sleep.”
“No problem,” Barnes said. “But—”
“What?”
“See you tomorrow?”
“First thing in the morning,” I told him.
“Fine,” Barnes said.
I turned to go.
“Just one thing,” Barnes called after me.
I turned back. “What?”
“It’s none of my business,” Barnes said. “But if you wouldn’t mind a little constructive criticism.”
What could I say? Who doesn’t mind a little constructive criticism?
“What’s that?” I asked.
Barnes shrugged. “I think you probably read too much detective fiction.”
