Corruption City

by Horace McCoy

  Throughout it all Nemo sat silently, occasionally glancing at Ackerman and Igo Grodzka. Harrigan saw these glances and felt the silence and he knew that something was going on in Nemo’s mind. He began to sweat.

  When the lawyers were gone, Harrigan said, “Why didn’t you give me some help? Why didn’t you say something?”

  Nemo said, “This is your baby, Eamon. I told you.”

  “I had the answer a long time ago,” Igo said.

  Harrigan’s hands shook as he picked up the telephone and dialed a number. He doubled his handkerchief over the mouthpiece to disguise his voice. He said, “Judge Whitcomb, please.” He frowned. “Do you know where he is? It’s very important.” He smiled. “Thank you.”

  He hung up and said, “It’s going to be all right, Nemo. Believe me it will.” He dialed information. “The number of the University Club, please.”

  Judge Wylie Whitcomb walked down the steps of the University Club and turned south. He was sixty years old and he had had a completely undistinguished career. He had been a mediocre lawyer and had been brought to Harrigan’s attention many years before by scouts who reported favorably on his adaptability. Harrigan just happened to have a judgeship handy—would Whitcomb be interested in a job that paid $20,000 a year for as many years as he kept his nose clean? Whitcomb was interested, very much.

  Judge Whitcomb saw a Cadillac sedan moving slowly down the street. Eamon Harrigan was leaning forward in the rear seat, looking out the window, beckoning to him.

  Judge Whitcomb stepped off the curbing and Trickett, who was driving, had the door open and the judge got inside, hardly losing a step. He sat down beside Harrigan and the first thing he said was, “Did you tell Mrs. Whitcomb who you were?”

  Harrigan answered impatiently that he hadn’t, then he told the judge what he wanted, a restraining order, an injunction against John Conroy. There was to be an exhibit of photographs ...

  Judge Whitcomb knew about it. He had read about it and he had heard it talked about at the Bar Association meeting he had just attended.

  Harrigan said they wanted the injunction the first thing in the morning.

  Judge Whitcomb shook his head. He said that it could not be done. It was impossible.

  Harrigan argued that somewhere in some law book there must be a statute that could be interpreted, even twisted, to support such an injunction. Judge Whitcomb said that the Appellate Court would throw it right back in his face and that his professional prestige would be irreparably damaged.

  “Never mind your professional prestige,” Harrigan said. “We’ve got our tails in a crack.”

  Judge Whitcomb pointed out that if he did this it would be so obvious and flagrant that his usefulness to the syndicate would be at an end.

  Harrigan coldly informed him that if he couldn’t do this his usefulness was at an end, anyway. He wanted the injunction, invalid or not, Appellate Court or not. They needed time and this was the way to get it. “I want that injunction by morning,” Harrigan said. “Otherwise I’ll see that you are brought to trial for malfeasance of public office. Remember—in the morning ...”

  But by morning Judge Wylie Whitcomb was dead. Some time after midnight he had closed the heavy library door, stretched himself flat on the floor, propped his head against the walnut desk, taken off his right shoe and sock, pushed his big toe through the trigger guard of a twelve-gauge shotgun, and blown off the top of his head.

  No farewell note was left, but Mrs. Whitcomb said that the judge had been in ill health for some time.

  John followed Amanda out the front door of the Golden Cock, where they had been having dinner as they did almost every night. He took her arm as they crossed the street and went into Culp’s Square. They sat down on a bench near the log cabin replica of the original cabin, erected one hundred years ago on this site by Josiah Culp. The park was called Culp’s Square in his honor and was a historical monument in the heart of the shopping and theatrical district.

  Amanda was very depressed. “Nothing has happened,” she said. “Every lead we’ve had—and they’ve been few enough—has turned out to be no lead at all. How long before the people will lose interest in us?”

  “Something will happen,” he said calmly. “The governor didn’t give me a time limit. I’ll stay until something happens. And something will.”

  “Do you really think the exhibit of photographs will do the trick?”

  “That’s the word,” he said. “Trick.”

  Carefully he explained his strategy. He had begun to believe that Crespi was worried and that his henchmen were irritable. Why? It could only be that the mere existence of pressure—the constant awareness that someone was prying, asking questions, scrutinizing records, was bad for the syndicate. So many people were involved, so many lives had been touched by the syndicate that a sense of incessant pressure must somewhere be causing nervousness in someone. The morale of the organization must consequently be suffering. And the more tricks he could think of—the more worry, the more irritability, the more nervousness. The result must inevitably be a mistake. Crespi would do something sooner or later—he would set his own trap.

  “And then what?”

  “When Nemo goes, they all go—Harrigan, all of them.” He paused and looked at her, still feeling an emptiness and a sadness over his father’s death. “And then,” he said slowly, “I’ll go back to the university, where I belong.”

  She stiffened a little. There was a challenge in her face when she looked at him. “You fascinate me,” she said. “Did I ever tell you that I once did a paper on you?”

  “Me?”

  She nodded. “You were a celebrated young man. My senior year I did the paper and all the time I was composing it I was wondering why a man as brilliant and young as you had decided to spend his life on a college campus.”

  “And what did you conclude?” he asked with a touch of amusement in his voice.

  “Nothing then, because I didn’t know. But I know now. You’re an escapist.”

  He took a long puff of his cigarette and let the smoke roll out of his mouth without inhaling. He left it drift away before he spoke. It had been said about him before. Dean Roughead had said it often. “Well, I picked a nice place to escape to,” he said slowly. “I can breathe at the university. There’s no dirt and no stink of sweat there. No grafters, no crooks, no killers ...”

  Suddenly, without the slightest warning, two men—Trickett and Igo Grodzka—came out of the shadows beside the little log cabin and stood on either side of the bench. They had their right hands in their coat pockets. Amanda and John barely had time to be surprised.

  Igo said, “Get on your feet and come with us.”

  “Come on, now,” Trickett said. “Let’s don’t do this the hard way. Get up.”

  John and Amanda stood up.

  “You don’t want the lady,” John said.

  “The lady, too,” Igo said. “We’ll go this way,” he said, indicating a path instead of the walkway.

  They started off, Trickett and Igo flanking them.

  A Cadillac was waiting at the curb. As John hesitated, a hand reached out of the open back door and grabbed Amanda’s wrist.

  “Okay, okay,” John said. “Take your hands off her. We’re coming.” They got in back. Nemo Crespi was sitting in the corner.

  Igo sat on the folding seat as Trickett got behind the wheel and swung the car into the traffic.

  John leaned forward to Igo. “Is that Nemo Crespi?” he asked, pretending to be impressed.

  Igo said nothing.

  Nemo said, “You sound disappointed, Mr. Conroy.”

  “I am, a little,” John said. “This early Hollywood stuff. You ought to catch up on your movies. They don’t do this any more. This went out with the model A.”

  Nemo smiled faintly.

  John put his hand on Amanda’s knee. He could feel her trembling. He said to Nemo, “Can’t we let the lady out and discuss this privately?”

  Nemo said, “Pul
l over, Verne.”

  Trickett glanced back through the rear, window, trying to find a gap in the traffic flow so he could pull over.

  “No,” Amanda said.

  “Please,” John said. “Get out.”

  Trickett was pulling over.

  Amanda said, “The only way you’ll get me out of here is to throw me out. I’m sure Mr. Crespi doesn’t want to attract that much attention.” She looked at Nemo. “I wouldn’t miss this for anything,” she said, sitting back.

  “No, I guess you wouldn’t,” John said slowly.

  “Go ahead,” Nemo said to Trickett. The car pulled ahead.

  “You got guts, Miss Waycross,” Nemo said.

  “What’s this all about?” John asked Nemo.

  Nemo said, “Mr. Conroy, I want you to call this thing off. You got till tomorrow twelve o’clock noon to pull out.”

  “I’m shaking all over, Nemo,” John said. “If you were going to roust me around you would have done it a long time ago. You wouldn’t have waited till now.”

  “I’m not talking about rough stuff, Mr. Conroy, I’m talking about gratitude.”

  “Gratitude?”

  “Well, manners, then.”

  “Gratitude? Manners? What’re you getting at?”

  “I’ll leave it to Miss Waycross,” Nemo said. “If you bought me an education and I turned around and used that education to try to put you in the big house and wreck your business, is that nice? I bought this guy his education. Look what he’s trying to do with it.”

  “You bought my education?” John said.

  Nemo shrugged. “So Mike Conroy bought it. Same thing.”

  “How is that the same thing?”

  “It was my dough. Your old man was on my payroll.”

  John just stared at him.

  “Graft,” Nemo said. “Sixty g’s worth. Ten thousand a year for six years.” Nemo leaned forward to look at him. Without changing his tone he said, “Your old man was a crooked cop, kid. Now you pull out of here by twelve o’clock noon tomorrow and get the hell back wherever you came from and we’ll keep this a secret just between ourselves, okay?”

  John leaned across Amanda, reaching for Nemo’s throat. Igo grabbed him and pulled him away. Igo’s eyes were wide and excited. His hand flashed to his inside coat pocket and came out and there was a sharp click and light suddenly glinted off the long blade of a knife.

  “Put that away,” Nemo said quietly. “He’ll behave himself. He’s just had a shock.”

  Mrs. Conroy wouldn’t look at her son. She just kept shaking her head, biting her lips. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” was all that she would say.

  “But where did you think the money was coming from?” John asked.

  “Please,” Amanda said to him. “Please, John. Let her alone. Come back in the morning.”

  “I’m finding out right now,” John said. He turned back to his mother. “Sixty thousand dollars! Ten thousand dollars a year for six years! Where did it come from?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

  “Mike Conroy was no stranger to you. He was your husband. How in God’s name can you live with a man that long and not know where the money comes from? Where? Where did it come from?”

  Amanda touched his arm. “Please, John,” she said.

  John flung her arm away. “This is important to me. I’ve got to know.”

  He dropped down on one knee beside his mother. Mrs. Conroy was weeping silently. “Listen, Ma. Listen,” he said, and he was no longer angry. “You’re holding out on me. You do know.”

  Mrs. Conroy lifted her eyes and looked at him.

  “I’ve got an ultimatum, Ma. I’ve got to pull out of this mess by noon tomorrow or the story’ll break in the papers. Crespi’s not bluffing. He’ll do it. Headlines. ‘Mike Conroy Was a Crooked Cop.’ We don’t want that to happen, Ma. He’s dead. It means disgrace for him.”

  “Don’t let it happen, Johnny,” she said, sobbing. “What have I got left? A medal and some newspaper clippings. Leave them to me. Quit the case. Resign—”

  John’s eyes narrowed. “Then it’s true. My college money came from Nemo Crespi.”

  “I don’t know,” Mrs. Conroy said.

  “But you had your suspicions, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

  She finally nodded. “Yes. But I was afraid to ask—” She buried her face in her hands, sobbing again.

  John Conroy stood up. “Well, that’s the blow-off, I guess,” he said heavily. He went to the telephone and called the Star-Journal. Without identifying himself, he asked who the Collector of Internal Revenue was. The man at the Journal said Rufus Lamont.

  John called Lamont, told him who he was and what he wanted, a look at the income tax returns. Lamont was very much annoyed but, convinced that it was urgent, he finally agreed to meet John in front of the Federal Building in thirty minutes.

  Lamont had no trouble locating Mike Conroy’s returns. He found the serial numbers and pulled the returns from the files. There it was on each of six returns: $10,000 dividend from securities purchased by Acme Securities and Investment Company.

  John Conroy lighted a cigarette and his hand shook unsteadily. “Thank you,” he said to Lamont. He had no idea what he was going to do, or could do. He needed time to think.

  At eleven o’clock the next morning Amanda, Cicero, Mrs. Conroy, Walzer the newspaper publisher, District Attorney Fogel and John met at the suite in the Manchester Hotel. They were all sober-faced. Mrs. Conroy’s eyes were red. The door was locked and the telephones had been cut off.

  “The evidence speaks for itself,” John was saying. His eyes were bloodshot and he was tired from a sleepless night spent pacing the floor. “There cannot be the slightest doubt. My father was a crooked cop. There’s no sense in my trying to produce extenuating circumstances and say that he took Nemo Crespi’s graft for only six years—just long enough to put me through school. That’s an extenuating circumstance to me, but it won’t be to the public. A crooked cop is a crooked cop. I can protect Mike Conroy’s reputation by quiting this case. That means the whole investigation collapses and that the people are right back where they were—at the mercy of Crespi and his hoodlums. If he breaks this up there’s no telling where he’ll stop. He’s locked in with every big gangster in the country. They’re watching this. If this campaign dies, he’ll become the kingpin to end all kingpins.”

  Walzer shook his head. “We can’t let that happen.”

  John said to his mother, “I say this to you, Ma. Mike Conroy was willing to risk his good name to get money for my education. For all I know, he was willing to die for me. I think he’d be willing to risk disgrace to have that education pay off. You think so, too, don’t you, Ma?”

  “Yes, John,” she said quietly.

  “It’s up to you, Ma,” he said.

  Mrs. Conroy was thinking—not of herself, but of her son. If he resigned, his career was finished. He would never go back to the classes he loved so well. The investigation would collapse. The syndicate would be more powerful than ever, spreading and spreading and spreading. Mike had been a crooked cop, but only to prepare his son for a better life—and there would be no better life if John resigned. Mike didn’t matter now, and she didn’t matter.

  Mrs. Conroy rose to her feet and kissed him. “Yes, John. Yes!”

  John looked at Walzer. “Nemo wants an answer by noon, we’ll give him an answer by noon. Break the story! Beat him to the punch!”

  The extra edition of the Star-Journal hit the streets with the Mike Conroy story and they laid it on thick. They made emphatic the fact that John Conroy himself, with the approval of his mother, Mrs. Mabel Conroy, the lieutenant’s widow, had had full knowledge of the facts before they were printed and had urged that the story be given to the public in detail.

  The city was rocked. Governor Duncan himself arrived and went into conference with John, Walzer and Fogel.

  The governor said he was in a spot. He had received many telepho
ne calls and telegrams demanding John’s removal. Many of these were from important and influential people.

  Walzer insisted that the governor had misread the temperament of the people. Somebody always complained. Granted that there was basis for complaint here, granted all that—there was no sense in this critical situation in trying to guess who was right and who was wrong.

  “Damn it, Aaron,” Walzer said, “people don’t elect a man to public office to lean in the direction every breeze blows. They elect a man they can trust to make up his own mind in a pinch. John Conroy’s got guts enough to make up his. Now you have got to have guts enough to make up yours.”

  “All right,” the governor said. “For the record, I’m behind John Conroy all the way.”

  “I’ve got radio and television time. Will you tell the people that—immediately?” Walzer asked.

  “Yes,” the governor said. “I will.”

  Many thousands saw the program on television and many thousands more heard the radio broadcast.

  Walzer introduced Governor Duncan and John, and then the governor said very simply that he had the utmost faith in John Conroy and he reiterated that the State would back him to the limit.

  He called the citizens to arms—and then he introduced John Conroy.

  John said nothing about Mike and nothing about himself.

  “This fight’s not going to be won by getting the top man first,” he said. “It’s going to be won from the bottom up. I need everybody’s help. Do not be intimidated. Don’t be afraid. If you have information about these men, any kind of information, bring it to me. Don’t you try to decide whether it’s important or not. Let us decide that. A word here, a word there—and we will be able to build a case. If you think you need protection, I shall see that you get it. Even if we have to use the state militia for your bodyguard. Is that right, Governor Duncan?”

  The governor put his hands over his head and applauded.

  The 533 photographs covered two walls of the reception room, from baseboard to molding. They were 8 x 10 glossy prints that had been enlarged from mug pictures from the police department, and the display looked like the nightmare of an abstractionist.