by Horace McCoy
Even more startling, however, was the presence—in a roped-off area in one corner—of two men: Grodzka and Trickett. They sat stiffly, like mummified Neanderthal men on display in a museum, and indeed they were part of the exhibit. Trickett had demanded to know what the hell Conroy thought he was doing. He had been coolly informed that that was all that was left of the reception room—that corner—and they would have to wait until Conroy had time for them.
It was inevitable that the exhibit would draw enormous crowds, the great majority of whom would be only curious. Eight additional uniformed police were assigned to try to handle the crowds, but John and his staff were swamped.
There were some whose eyes gleamed on beholding one or another of the photos, and there were even a few whose faces suddenly went deadpan on observing the Crespi men in the corner. Most of them went their way and said nothing. But others did not. These others went inside to talk to someone.
What they had to say was usually insignificant—trivial, in fact. But each bit of trivia was interesting, and the whole was more than interesting. The leads would be followed, and the pieces would ultimately fit together.
At ten p.m., when the exhibit closed, the two Crespi men were taken into the office. They were shaking with fury, and with an emotion that was not quite fear—for they had not felt fear in so long a time that it was not easy now for them to feel it.
They sat in chairs in front of the desk. John leaned against the desk facing them. Cicero, Amanda and Van Pelt were standing beside the desk.
Cicero had a thick transcript in his hands. “Judge Whitcomb rendered a verdict of not guilty,” he was reading.
“The case of the People vs. Verne Trickett was appealed. Decision of Superior Court Number One upheld, appeal denied.” He closed the transcript. “That brings us up to date on you boys,” he said.
Amanda said, “Now, Trickett, let’s get back to your brief career on the police force. You were assigned to the traffic detail?”
“You heard him read it. You know what’s in the transcript,” Trickett said in a sullen voice.
John took a step toward him and Trickett thought he was going to be slugged.
“Yeah. Traffic detail,” Trickett said.
“You were also an instructor in marksmanship at the Police Academy, were you not?”
Trickett’s eyes flickered and went dead. “Yeah.”
“When you arrested Igo Grodzka you were off duty, were you not?” John asked.
“That’s right.”
“You were waiting for Igo to show up so you could arrest him, weren’t you?”
“No. I just happened to be there, that’s all.”
“How long after the arrest of Igo before you went to work for Nemo Crespi?”
“A month, maybe.”
“No connection between the two at all. That was something that just happened, too?”
“Sure.”
“For a big healthy guy you got damned little control over your life. So you went to work for Nemo. Nemo liked to have law-enforcement officers on his payroll, didn’t he?”
“You have to ask Nemo that.”
John glanced at Igo. “You got pretty mad when this guy arrested you, didn’t you, Igo?” John asked.
“I get mad any time I get arrested.”
“Especially him?”
Igo didn’t get that.
“I mean a traffic cop,” John said. “You’re a big shot. You get arrested it ought to be by some officer higher up than a traffic cop.”
“Well ... Igo didn’t seem to remember.
John picked up the transcript. “This is Trickett’s report, Igo. I’m quoting now. ‘Prisoner very tough. Said he would get my job. Said for me to call Eamon Harrigan at Montana five four thousand.’ That’s what you said, wasn’t it?”
Trickett flared. “Don’t answer him!” he yelled to Igo. He said to John, “My report don’t say that. Show me ...”
John handed him the transcript to which Trickett’s routine report had been stapled. It read: Prisoner insisted that a mistake had been made. Requested permission to telephone his lawyer.
Trickett said to John, “You made that up. Here’s the report right here.”
John smiled. “Yeah, I made that up. But take a good look at that report. That’s a three-page report. The middle sheet’s got a different kind of typing—it’s blacker. That means somebody retyped that page later. After a new ribbon had been put on the typewriter. Why was it changed?”
Trickett shook his head, handing back the transcript.
“You were off duty when you arrested Igo?”
“Yeah.”
“You were in the cigar store?”
“Yeah.”
“What’d they sell at this cigar store?”
“Cigars. Cigarettes.”
“There was a small bookie joint in the back, wasn’t there?”
Trickett nodded. “Okay. It was a bookie joint.”
“Who ran the joint?”
Trickett didn’t say anything.
“Hazel Morrison’s brother ran it, didn’t he? You were living with Hazel. Nemo was trying to close her brother up. Nemo was organizing the bookies. Morrison was one of the last to fall in line. Right after that you and Morrison and Hazel went to work for Nemo, didn’t you?”
There was a knock at the door. It was Ansel. He had a woman with him, a buxom woman who was flashily dressed and looked like a madam. He introduced her as Hazel Morrison.
“What’s the idea dragging me up here?” she barked.
“Would you like to call your lawyer?” John asked, holding out the telephone. “Montana five four thousand.”
“Yeah. I would—” She gulped, then fell silent, shooting a startled look at Trickett.
“All right, that’s all,” John said. “Get out. All of you.”
Everyone in the room stared at him in astonishment. Slowly the two hoodlums got up and filed out, followed by the woman.
John looked around at the staff. “I got what I wanted,” he said. “Acme.” To Van Pelt he said, “Get me Fogel.” Then to Amanda he said, “Tomorrow morning you go downtown with Cicero to the Securities Commission and go through the whole history of Acme. I want to know everything about that outfit.”
“But why?” Amanda asked.
“Acme’s phone number,” John said quietly, “is Montana five four thousand.”
Van Pelt at the phone, said, “Fogel’s at the theater. They expect him in an hour.”
“Leave him a message. I want him to call me when he comes in—at my mother’s house.” He looked at Amanda. “I’d like to spend the night with her.”
“Of course,” Amanda said gently.
That night John sat with his mother and talked to her. “It’s like a war,” he said. “If you think you ought to fight, why, you go ahead and fight—even though you know you can get hurt. Somebody always gets hurt, but something good eventually comes of it.”
“It’s good having you home, Johnny—even like this,” Mrs. Conroy said, looking at him softly.
“Even like this?”
“Even though I seldom get to see you.”
“All that’ll change one of these days, Ma.”
The phone rang. It was Fogel.
“You’ve got a job to do—a hell of a big job. Tonight,” John said over the phone. “I want the Acme Securities and Investment Company telephones bugged. Can you do it?”
“Sure,” Fogel said. “But I haven’t the right. Nobody has.”
“Do it, anyhow. I’ll take the responsibility.”
“That isn’t good enough,” Fogel said. “We need somebody to back us up—somebody who won’t get slapped down as hard as we would be.”
John thought for a moment. “Start working,” he said. “By the time you get the bugs in I’ll have the authority to cover you.”
“Now wait a minute,” Fogel said. “Let’s be sure about this. I don’t want to be left on a limb.”
“I’ll have the authority,
” John said. He hung up and went back to his mother in the living room. “I’m sorry, Ma. I’ve got to leave.”
“Do what you’ve got to do,” Mrs. Conroy said. “I understand. And God bless you.”
Within two hours, working with skilled technicians supplied by Fogel, the Acme wires had been tapped and a listening post set up in an empty office around the corner on the second floor of a second-hand furniture store. Van Pelt and Kessel had moved in with the recording equipment and taken over.
They had gotten an additional break. They also had tapped the telephone wire of Paul and Pia Crespi Sublette who lived on the second floor above the Acme Securities and Investment Company in a very handsome flat.
It was midnight when John Conroy reached Judge Helen Waycross’s apartment. She had gone to bed but she was not asleep. The butler admitted him and then sent Frenelle to speak to the judge.
She appeared in a dressing robe and gold mesh slippers.
“I’m sorry to disturb you like this, Judge Waycross,” John said brusquely, “but I need your help—at once.”
“Certainly. Anything that I can do.”
“We know that a firm called the Acme Securities and Investment Company occupying a small building over on the west side is the front Nemo Crespi uses to dish out his graft money. Our problem would be simple if that were all. We’d subpoena the books and close it up. But Acme has a lot of legitimate accounts and if I close it up a lot of people are going to get hurt who can’t afford it—innocent people. I don’t want that to happen.”
“Naturally,” Judge Waycross said.
“We also know that unless Nemo Crespi talks to his syndicate personally, he does it by telephone. The telephone records show that he gets few long-distance calls at his own number, but a great many at Acme. The Acme number, Montana five four thousand, keeps popping up. I need your help, Judge.”
“I don’t see how I can help,” Judge Waycross said.
“I want to tap the Acme telephone wire. I want to set up a listening post and tape record every word that comes over.”
“You don’t need my help,” Judge Waycross said. “You need the help of the telephone company. Only they won’t permit it.”
“It’s been done before,” John said, “without their help. It can be done again. There are ways. This is big game we’re after and the size of the game justifies the means. All I want from you is authority to tap the wires.”
Judge Waycross took a cigarette. John let her light it for herself. If she thought this was discourteous she didn’t show it, “I wish you hadn’t asked me that,” she said. “I have no authority to issue such an order. But I will. By the time the higher court revokes it, you may have gotten what you’re after. I’ll write it for you.” She stood up. So did John. “By the way,” she said, “what are you after?”
“Evidence that will send Crespi and Eamon Harrigan to jail for the rest of their lives—maybe to the chair. I think this might just do it.”
She looked at him for a long moment. “Yes,” she said finally. “It would have to be that way. Will you please wait?”
Later, Judge Waycross handed the taxi driver a couple of bills as the cab rounded the corner. When it stopped in front of the Fleur-de-Lis Apartments she got out and went quickly across the sidewalk to the entrance. It had been years since she had spoken to Eamon Harrigan or had any desire to. But she knew that now she had to; the time had come.
Chapter Six
THE ECHOES OF THE buzzer hardly had died away before Eamon Harrigan had the door open. He had been waiting nervously ever since Helen Waycross had called that she was coming. He had seen her but seldom in twenty-five odd years, just glimpses of her in passing and only once face to face—at Mike Conroy’s burial. But he had never forgotten her.
He was all hands as he closed the door, trying desperately to think of something gracious to say to this woman who was now a great lady; and then he turned and saw her face. He unluckily caught it when her reaction to his over-luxurious apartment was full and complete and there was no misunderstanding the look of shock in her face. The inferiority that he had been feeling ever since she had said she was coming now practically paralyzed him.
She smiled at him, almost wistfully. She put out her hand. “It’s been a long time, Eamon,” she said. “A very long time.”
“Lemme take your coat,” he said.
He put the coat on the big, ugly, velvet couch. “Can I fix you a drink?” he asked.
“That’d be nice,” she said.
He moved to the wall where the bookshelves were and pushed a button. The wall started turning. In a minute the bar swung into view. It was built on the back of the bookcase, stools and all. Eamon grinned. His confidence was returning. “Scotch or bourbon?”
“May I have a gin Collins?”
He made a wry face. “Now you got me.”
“It doesn’t really matter,” she said.
“Oh, I got the stuff,” he said. “I got anything in the world you want. Only all I can fix myself is whisky and water or soda.”
“May I make it?”
“Sure.”
Helen went behind the bar. She noted that Eamon indeed had the stuff. There were gins and whiskys and liqueurs for every taste. “Could I mix a drink for you?” she asked.
“Would I be impolite if I refused?”
“No, of course not.” She smiled. “That was very nice, Eamon. I’d forgotten. You still don’t drink?”
“That’s right.”
She came from behind the bar, bringing her drink with her. She toasted him.
He smiled back at her. His composure had completely returned, and he had begun to wonder what she wanted. All the time he had been waiting for her to arrive, he had felt within himself the stirring of an emotion long since entombed, hard and solid, and although he well knew that everybody always wanted something and that she would not at this late date come to see him for emotional reasons, there had been the tiny chance that he might be wrong. But her manner dispelled that.
Helen moved to the window and stood looking down into Caroline Street. It was dark and quiet late at night, but by day it rattled with drayage trucks. She remembered when it rattled with wagons and horses’ hoofs.
“There’s the house I was born in,” she said. “It’s still there.”
Harrigan walked over and looked out at the three-story tenement. “Things don’t change much around here.”
“And you were born here—in this very building.”
“First floor, rear,” he said.
“I remember, Eamon. You’ve come a long way.”
“So have you,” Eamon said quietly.
She looked at him and suddenly moved back to a chair and sat down.
Harrigan turned away from the window. “I guess you’ve come a longer way than any of us, Helen. You’re the only one of us that ever made a clean break with the old neighborhood. Some of it always stuck to the rest of us. More to me than anybody else.” He came over and sat down in a captain’s chair. “Frog Shorty dead in the electric chair, Charlie Manatti dead in the gas chamber, Mike Conroy gone—I guess you and I are about the only ones left from the old Crushers.”
She stared at him.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m proud of you. You really did it the hard way: waitress, stenographer, secretary, clerk, lawyer, magistrate, judge—”
“You did it for me, Eamon,” she said. “You got the judgeship for me. And I’ve always been grateful. You’ll never know how many times I’ve thought of you.”
“Well, I’ll let you in on something that positively is not a secret. I don’t do favors for people who can’t do favors for me. That’s the kind of business I’m in. Only once in my life have I ever done a favor for somebody without wanting something in return, or knowing that at some time or other I could get something in return. Only once in my whole life. That was when I saw to it that the party put you on the bench.”
“I know I owe you a debt, Eamon. I’m here to pay it.”
“You owe me nothing,” Harrigan said. “The books are square. I was in love with you.”
“My books are not square. I’ve got to put them in order. I want to tell you that the telephone wires of Acme Securities have been tapped by John Conroy.”
Harrigan smiled. “Is that supposed to interest me?” he asked.
“It does interest you, Eamon. The wires have been tapped and a listening post has been set up. Every word is being recorded.”
“How do you know that?”
“I gave the authority for the wire-tapping.”
“You don’t have that kind of authority.”
“I took it. The syndicate is an evil and vicious thing. It’s got to be smashed.”
“You can’t smash it with a wire-tap. You know wire-tap evidence isn’t admissible in any court in the country.”
“John Conroy knows that, too. But what he hears on the wire-tap might lead him to other evidence that is admissible.”
Harrigan stood up. He took out his keys and swung the chain around his forefinger and let it unwind. He said, “Thanks, Helen, thanks very much.”
“I owed you a debt, Eamon,” she said. “But I know it’s much deeper than that. I can’t let you go to prison without lifting a hand. This is all my fault—all of it. If I had married you thirty years ago as I promised, none of this would have happened. Our lives would have been different. We would have opened a drugstore. That’s what we both wanted, remember?”
Harrigan nodded, preoccupied. All he could think of was seeing Nemo Crespi and telling him about the wiretap.
“I’ll get your coat,” he said.
He went to the door with her and opened it.
She said, “I’m sorry about the drugstore,” and went out. Eamon closed the door. For just a moment there was a tender, nostalgic look in his face. Then he blinked his eyes hard and the old grimness came back, the jungle concentration. He had to see Nemo at once.
Nemo Crespi knew that the usefulness of Acme Securities and Investment Company was at an end. Montana five four thousand was a telephone number known to all top-ranking racket and gambling chiefs throughout the country. And now the telephone lines were tapped. Nemo not only had his own empire to think of, he was affiliated with similar empires and if he in any way contributed to their troubles, he would be held to account. In view of the bad state of nerves the crusade had caused in the out-of-town boys, his hold on them was none too strong, anyway. Not only that, but since John Conroy knew about Acme, the record books themselves constituted a very serious danger. Conroy could seize and search at will. Paul Sublette was a danger, and even Pia herself, because of Paul. They might break.
