Carmody glanced around the room, frowning slightly. He noticed a tray of smeared highball glasses on the bureau with two whiskey bottles beside it. One was empty, the other full, and they were of different brands.
“What’s our boy’s name?” Carmody asked.
“Samuel T. Degget.”
“Did you check his wallet? Was anything missing?”
“No, he’s got all his money.”
Carmody stared at Degget for a moment or so, trying to get an impression of the man. He was married and had grown daughters (Degget was telling Myers now in a high squealing voice). You couldn’t be sure, Carmody thought, but he didn’t seem to fit this kind of trouble. The girl, yes; the shooting, no. Degget looked like a cautious methodical person, and was probably a pillar of rectitude in his own community. When he cut loose it would be far from home and with all risks reduced to the absolute minimum. Everything bought and paid for, anonymous and artificial, and no unpleasant after effects except a big head in the morning. Why would he louse himself up with murder?
“What do you have on the girl?” he asked Dirksen.
“She works as a waitress in the coffee shop in the lobby. No folks in town. She lives in a boardinghouse on Elm Street with another girl. One of the waiters in the coffee shop remembers that Degget and she were pretty friendly. You know, he kidded around with her a lot.”
Carmody frowned and looked once more at the whiskey bottles. Two different brands, one bottle empty, the other full. He checked his watch. The State liquor stores had closed two hours ago; he was wondering where Degget had got the second bottle. It wasn’t likely that he had bought them both at the same time; if so, they would have been the same brand.
He glanced at Dirksen, who wet his lips. “Something wrong?” Dirksen asked, worried by Carmody’s expression.
“Call the bell captain and ask him if there was any service to this room tonight,” Carmody said.
Dirksen was on the phone a moment, and then looked over the receiver at Carmody. “No service, but somebody from here asked to see a bellhop.”
“They may have run out of booze and wanted another bottle,” Carmody said sharply. “Bellhops can find one for a price. Get the name of the boy who came up here, and find out if he’s still on duty.”
“Sure, sure.” Dirksen looked up from the phone a moment later. “It was a fellow named Ernie, but he’s not around. Do you think—”
“Get his address and send a car out there. And put him on the air. He can’t be far away. Take Degget in as a material witness but get this guy Ernie.”
“Right, Sarge.” With routine to absorb him, Dirksen was crisp and confident. Myers drifted over, looking puzzled. “What’s all this, Mike?”
“It was Jack the Ripper, really,” Carmody said, smiling coldly at him. “I spotted it right away.”
“What’s funny about it?” Myers said, irritation tightening his cautious mouth.
“Nothing at all,” Carmody said. “Actually, it’s pretty sad.”
“We got the man who—”
“No you haven’t,” Carmody said. “Not if my hunch is right. But Dirk can fill you in. I’ve got to be going.”
It was nearly midnight when he got to Beaumonte’s, and by then the night had turned clear and cool. Beaumonte opened the door and said, “Well, you and your brother must have had quite a talk.” He wore a crimson silk dressing gown and held a pumpkin-sized brandy snifter in one hand.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Carmody said. He strolled into the room and saw with a slight shock that Bill Ackerman was sitting in a deep chair beside the fireplace. The Delaney business was very big, he knew then. Nothing but high-priority operations could get Ackerman in from the country.
“Hello, Mike,” Ackerman said, smiling briefly at him.
Carmody smiled and said hello. There was another man sitting in a chair with his back to the window, a powerfully built young man with wide pale features and dull observant eyes. Carmody said hello to him, too. His name was Johnny Stark and he had been a highly touted heavyweight contender until something went wrong with his ears. He was slightly deaf, and worrying about it had stamped a solemn, surprised look on his face. Ackerman owned his contract when he was fighting, and had taken him on as bodyguard when the medical examiners barred him from the ring. Stark sat with his huge hands hanging between his legs, his fairly good ear cocked toward Ackerman and his dull eyes flicking around the room like those of an inquisitive dog. He mumbled his answer to Carmody’s greeting; this had become a habit since his hearing had gone bad. He was never sure what people said to him and he covered up with grunts and mumbles which could mean anything.
“Well, how’d it go?” Beaumonte said, easing himself into the sofa.
“The kid was sensible; he’ll cooperate,” Carmody said. This wasn’t a lie, he thought; he’d bring Eddie around some way.
“That’s just fine,” Beaumonte said, smiling at him. “I told you I didn’t want trouble.”
“There won’t be any.”
Ackerman stood and stretched leisurely, his hands stuck deep into his trouser pockets. Carmody didn’t know whether he had been listening or not; it was impossible to guess accurately about anything connected with Bill Ackerman. He was a tall man in his middle fifties, with the lean, disciplined body of a professional soldier.
There was nothing to be learned from his features, which were tanned and hard, nor from his eyes which were merely sharp black globes beneath bushy gray eyebrows. His hair was the color of well-used and well-kept silver, and he dressed like a banker in town and a rancher in the country. He was a cold, controlled man who emanated a quality of blunt, explosive power; there was none of Beaumonte’s phoniness in him. He lived in the country because he liked it there. The fact that it was pleasant for his wife and two daughters was simply coincidence. Had he wanted to live in the city, that’s where he would live. Ackerman was driven by cool, dispassionate greed; he wanted to expand and expand, consolidate his gains and expand again. There was no definite goal on the horizon; it was the struggle as well as the victory that pleased him. Greed dominated his life. His farms and stock paid for themselves and his foreman and hands admired his shrewd tough efficiency. Everything in Ackerman’s operations paid its way or was dropped. His world was money, and rivers of it flowed to him from handbooks and policy wheels throughout the state. More of it rolled in from his trucking and contracting firms, from fleets of cabs and packing houses. The money mounted faster and faster, and with a fraction of it he bought immunity from the law. Every cop he hired, every politician he subsidized, every judge he elevated became a prop to his empire, chained into place forever by guilt. No one got away from him; men were chattels, and he was as greedy for them as he was for money.
Carmody wasn’t afraid of Ackerman; but he wondered why he bothered to tell himself this so often. If there was anyone to fear in this deal, it was Ackerman. He had fought his way up in the rackets with cold and awful efficiency; he had begun in Chicago with Dion O’Bannion’s hoodlums, had run his own mob after repeal and had moved East to crash into the unions and the black market during the war. His past was marked with terror and violence but somehow he had come through it without being killed or jailed for life.
Now he stared at Carmody, his eyes narrowed under the bushy gray brows. “Your brother is a smart man, Mike. Runs in the family, I guess.”
Carmody felt a sharp surge of anger at that. But he said quietly, “He’s smart enough.”
“Specifically, he won’t identify Delaney at the trial. Is that right?”
“That’s the agreement.”
“What is it costing us?”
“Ten thousand. That’s what Beaumonte said.”
“It’s a fair price,” Ackerman said, rubbing his jaw. He didn’t like paying off; it wasn’t natural for money to flow the other way. “Probably more dough than he’s ever seen in one piece, eh?”
“Sure,” Carmody said.
Ackerman said casually, “I wan
t to talk to him, Mike. Fix it up for tomorrow night.”
“Will that look good?” Carmody asked. He knew Ackerman had tried to jolt him, and that was ominous. It meant that Ackerman hadn’t believed him completely. He smiled coldly, his tough strength and brains responding to the challenge. “If you’re seen huddling with him before the trial it won’t look good when he double-crosses the D.A.”
“I said I want to talk to him,” Ackerman said, watching Carmody curiously. He looked more surprised than angry. There was never any discussion about his orders; he insisted on automatic compliance. “You bring him here tomorrow night. Let’s say ten o’clock. Got that?”
Beaumonte was watching them over the rim of his brandy snifter, and Johnny Stark had cocked his good ear anxiously toward the edge in Ackerman’s voice. The tension held in the long graceful room until Carmody dismissed it with a little shrug. “Sure, I’ve got it. Ten o’clock.”
“That’s about all then, I guess,” Ackerman said. “I’ll see you, Mike.”
“So long.”
After he had gone Ackerman sat down and lit a cigar. When it was drawing well he glanced at Beaumonte through the ropey layers of smoke. “I don’t know too much about Carmody,” he said. “What kind of a guy is he?”
“He’s tough,” Beaumonte said, nodding. “But he’s all right.”
Ackerman said nothing more and Beaumonte became uneasy. He waved the heavy smoke away from his eyes, and said, “What’s the matter? Don’t you trust him?”
Ackerman used one of his rare smiles. “I’m like a guy in the banking business. I don’t do business on trust. What’s Carmody’s job?”
“Just a job,” Beaumonte said. “He keeps an eye on the bookies in West, does some collecting, checks the records of a guy who wants to open a horse room or run a policy game. That kind of thing. And he settles beefs. He’s good at that.”
Ackerman rubbed his smooth hard jaw and was silent again for several minutes. Then he said, “Well, we’ve got a beef. Think he’s the man to settle it?”
“Well, that’s up to you,” Beaumonte said. Ackerman’s manner was making him nervous. He liked straight, direct orders; but Ackerman wasn’t giving orders. He was giving him an unwelcome responsibility in the deal. Beaumonte frowned, watching Ackerman hopefully for a crisp, final decision. In his heart he was a little bit afraid of Carmody; there was a look on the detective’s face at times that made him uneasy.
“We’ll give him a chance to settle it,” Ackerman said tapping his cigar on the side of an ashtray. “But just one. I don’t like the brother angle.”
“Blood is thicker than water, eh?”
“That’s it,” Ackerman said, using another rare smile. “But it’s not thicker than money. Anyway, I’m going to hedge the bet just in case. You call Dominic Costello in Chicago and ask him to line us up someone who can do a fast job.”
Beaumonte liked this much better. The decision was made, the orders given and he was in the clear. “I’ll take care of it,” he said. “How about a nightcap?”
“Okay. Make it light though, we’re driving to the country tonight.”
3
Carmody drove directly across town to his hotel which was near the center of the city and about a block from the river. He parked a car length from the canopied entrance and told the doorman that he would be going out again shortly.
Carmody had lived here for six years, in a three-room suite on a premium floor high above the city’s noise and dust. Letting himself in, he snapped on the lights and checked the time. Twelve-thirty. He had missed his shift completely, which would give Wilson something to complain about tomorrow. Let him, he thought. There was more at stake now than eight hours of routine duty.
First he had to get fixed on Karen Stephanson. She might be the lever to pry Eddie off the spot. Carmody paced the floor slowly, thinking over each word of their conversation, trying to recall every expression that had shifted across her small pale face. Finally, he sat down at the phone and called a man named Tony Anelli, a gambler who spent six months of each year in Miami.
Anelli sounded a little tight. “Howsa boy, howsa boy?” he said cheerfully. Carmody heard a woman’s high laughter in the background.
“I’m looking for some information,” Carmody said.
“Came to the right party,” Anelli said. “We got a party going, as a matter of fact.” This struck him as comical and he began to laugh. Carmody let him run down and then said, “Do you know anything about a girl named Karen Stephanson?”
“Karen Stephanson? Sounds Swedish,” Anelli said. He was silent a few seconds. “It’s familiar, Mike. I wish I wasn’t loaded. The old head is turning around like a merry-go-round. Wait a second. I met her a couple of times, if she’s the same dish. Thin girl, brown hair, kind of serious. Does that fit?”
“Yeah, that fits,” Carmody said. “What do you know about her?”
“Well, nothing much. She was Danny Nimo’s girl.”
“Danny Nimo?”
“He ran a string of handbooks in New Orleans. Pretty rough character.”
“She was his girl, eh?”
“Yeah, that’s right. He’s dead though. Died a year or so ago of pneumonia,” Anelli said. “That’s what always gets those big chesty guys. Let’s see now. I met her in Miami in ’50 or ’51. She’d been in a hell of an accident. Nimo took me up to the hospital to see her, and that’s why I remember her, I guess.”
“What kind of an accident?” Carmody asked. He was thinking of her coldly and savagely. The pale little face, the poised and regal manner, and twisting his brother around in her slim hands like a piece of helpless clay. A bitter smile appeared at the corners of his mouth. He’d put an end to that act.
“It was an automobile accident,” Anelli said. “Nimo was driving, and the story was that he was drunk. They hit a truck head-on; he told me her legs were broken in a dozen places.”
In spite of his anger, Carmody winced. He hated the idea of physical suffering, not for himself but for others. It was about the only crack in his hard, iconoclastic shell. But her suffering was over, he thought, and now she was staging a cheap, phony act for Eddie. He understood her flare-up at his offer of a drink; she had thought he knew about her relationship with Nimo and was attempting to blackmail her into two-timing Eddie. A nice sweet kid. The Miami phase is all over. That’s what she’d said. Sure, he thought, sure. Miami and Danny Nimo were a little trip along the primrose path, but now she was back on the strait and narrow, redeemed in the nick of time, saved by the bell, cheating the devil with a shoestring catch of her virtue. That would be her story, Carmody knew; told with a tactful tear or two and Eddie would buy it at any price.
“Thanks, Tony,” he said into the phone. “See you around.”
“Sure, keed. Take it easy. Wish I could do the same, but the night’s going to be bumpy, I think.”
Carmody hung up and walked into the bedroom, stripping off his suit coat. He showered and shaved, then opened the closet doors to choose his clothes. A dozen suits faced him in a neat row, and there was a line of glossy shoes with wooden blocks inside them in a rack on the floor. On either side of the suits were cedar-lined drawers filled with shirts, socks and underwear, and smaller trays containing cuff-links, tie-clips, handkerchiefs, a wallet and cigarette cases. Carmody took out a blue gabardine suit, a white shirt and a pair of cordovan shoes which had been shined and rubbed until they were nearly black. After dressing he glanced at himself in the full-length mirror. His thick blond hair was damp from the shower and there was an unpleasant little smile on his hard handsome face. All set for fun with Danny Nimo’s ex-passion-flower, he thought. It should be good. He wondered what would happen to her when he dropped Danny Nimo’s name into her lap. Fall apart in nice delicate pieces probably.
Carmody walked into the living room, made himself a light drink and put on an album of show tunes. She wound up her turn at two o’clock and Eddie had told him she lived at the Empire Hotel. Two-thirty should find her ho
me, unless she was out with someone else. Staring at the gleaming sweep of the river, he realized he was letting himself get emotional about her. And that was no good. Anger could upset his judgment as drastically as any other passion. What he thought of her didn’t matter; it wasn’t his job to strip away her defenses. His only job was to make her help him with Eddie. So to hell with what he thought of her, to hell with everything but his dumb kid brother.
Still staring at the river, he lit a cigarette and sipped his drink. The music wrapped itself around him, filtering into his mind with stories of love — love lost, love found, love dying, love growing. Every kind of love there is, he thought irritably. The songs were as bad as the movie he had walked out of tonight. All promise, hope, and sickly enchantment. Did anyone know love as it was defined by these groaning singers? Where was this nostalgia, this grandeur, this thing that could enrich a man even as he lost or destroyed it?
Well, where was it? he asked himself. Not in this world, that was certain. It was like Santa Claus, and the big kind man with whiskers who looked down from the clouds with a sad smile on his face. Fairy tales for dopes who would fall on their faces if it weren’t for these crutches.
To get his mind off it, he emptied an ashtray and straightened the pile of magazines on the coffee table. The room pleased him with its look of expensive comfort. It needed pictures, but he hadn’t enough confidence in his own judgment to buy the modern paintings he thought he liked, and he balked at the hunting prints which a dealer had told him would go with just about anything. Glancing about, Carmody remembered the way his father had hung holy pictures around the house with a bland disregard for anything but his own taste. St. Michael with his foot on Lucifer’s neck, the good and bad angels, St. Peter dressed like a Roman senator and St. Anthony looking like a tragic young poet. All over the place, staring at you solemnly when you snapped on the lights. Carmody hadn’t minded the pictures as much as his father’s stubborn insistence on sticking them in the most conspicuous spot in every room. It was like living in a church. Carmody hardly remembered his mother; she had died two months after having Eddie, when he himself was just eight years old. The old man had raised his sons alone; getting married again had never crossed his mind.
Rogue Cop Page 4
