“Okay,” Carmody said. “He’s probably a gravestone salesman. Now look; I suggest you start digging into Ackerman’s background immediately. There’s a loose end in his past that can trip him up, I think.”
“The D.A. has covered that ground before, Mike. Ackerman always kept in the clear. You know that.”
“I don’t run the department, it’s just a suggestion,” Carmody said. “But take it to heart, Jim. I know what I’m talking about.”
Wilson hesitated. Then he said, “I’ll pass that upstairs. You got anything specific in mind?”
“No, that’s the trouble. It could be anything, any time.”
“I’ll pass it on. Keep in touch.”
“Of course, Jim,” he said.
Half an hour later Carmody parked his car before Eddie’s home in the Northeast. It was almost noon then. Sunlight filtered through the chestnut trees along the block, and faded to a softer tone as it struck the pavements and lawns. The kids playing ball in the street stopped their game to watch Carmody with round solemn eyes. They all know Eddie’s dead, I guess, Carmody thought. He was probably a big favorite with them.
The front door was unlocked and he went inside. For a moment he stared about at the familiar furniture and pictures, frowning slightly. Then he walked upstairs to Eddie’s room, which was at the rear of the house, overlooking the back yard. He had come here for two reasons: to look through Eddie’s things and to wait for a call from the man who had been trying to reach him at Headquarters. Carmody went through Eddie’s closet, drawers, desk, looking for nothing and anything. Eddie might have made notes of his identification of Delaney, or he might have noticed that he was being tailed and kept a record of that. Working with trained speed, Carmody opened insurance policies, police department circulars and a bunch of old letters, most of them yellowing notes he had scribbled to Eddie when he was away at school. In the bottom drawer of the bureau were athletic programs, news clippings, class pictures, English compositions with inevitable titles: My First Vacation, When I Grow Up, The Pleasures of Daily Mass. And there were pictures of Mike Carmody, dozens of them; running with a football, getting set to pitch, smiling in his rookie’s uniform. There’s nothing here, he thought bitterly, unless someone wanted details of the great Mike Carmody’s career.
Downstairs again, he stopped with his hands on his hips and looked around the cool dim living room. He frowned at his father’s big upright piano, and wondered why Eddie had never got rid of it. It was a space waster and dust trap. But the room played its usual trick on him; the gentle eyes of the Madonna stared at him reproachfully; the silent piano and empty chairs made him guiltily aware of the old rupture between him and his father. Exasperated with himself, he picked up a stack of music from the piano and looked at some of the titles. It was the old Irish stuff. Kevin Barry; Let Erin Remember the Days of Old; O, Blame Not the Bard; Molly Brannigan. Carmody had heard his father sing them all a hundred times. What had he got out of these songs? Each one told the same poignant story of betrayal and death, of vanished glories, of forsaken people dying grandly in fruitless battles for betrayed causes. Why did he cherish these bitter memories? They belonged a thousand years in the past; why were they important to him in America?
Footsteps sounded on the porch and Carmody put the music back in place hastily. The front door opened and Father Ahearn came into the living room, fanning himself with a limp Panama hat. He stopped in surprise when he saw Carmody standing in the shadows by the piano. “Well, this would make the devil himself believe in miracles,” he said. “Coming up the street, I said a little prayer I’d find you here. I wanted to talk to you about Eddie.” He sat down slowly and rubbed his eyes with a trembling hand. “The arrangements, you know. I can’t get it through my head that the boy is gone.”
“About the arrangements, you do what you think is right,” Carmody said.
“As a matter of fact, I’ve done just that,” the priest said. “But I thought you’d like to know. The wake will be at Kelly’s, starting tonight at eight. Thursday morning at ten there’ll be a Requiem High Mass at St. Patrick’s. Eddie’s district is supplying fifty honorary pallbearers, and the Superintendent is coming. And the Mayor, too, if he can possibly make it.”
“That’s great,” Carmody said.
“It’s good of them,” Father Ahearn said, nodding slightly, and ignoring Carmody’s sarcasm. “Now about the actual pallbearers. I’ve got five of his good friends from the neighborhood. I’ve left a place open for you, Mike.”
Carmody turned away from him. “You’d better get someone else, Father. I’ll be busy.”
“Too busy to go to your brother’s funeral?” the old priest said softly.
“That’s right.” He was staring at the music on his father’s piano, a bitter look in his eyes. Maybe the old songs had a point. Betrayal and death. They were themes to haunt a man. “I’ll be busy looking for his killer, Father,” he said. “Let the Superintendent and the Mayor make a show at the funeral. They’ve got time, I haven’t.”
“So you’re going to avenge Eddie,” Father Ahearn said thoughtfully. “In that case, you’re a bigger fool than I imagined. You can’t avenge him, Mike. Don’t you understand that much about yourself?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You don’t believe in right and wrong,” Father Ahearn said, shaking his head angrily. “In your heart you believe Eddie was killed because he was stupid. Because he wasn’t like you. According to the rules you’ve made, there’s no such a thing as sin. So how can you hate something that doesn’t exist? By your standards, the men who killed him did no wrong. So how can you hold them to an accounting?” The old priest stood slowly, staring at Carmody with angry, impatient eyes. “Have the guts to be logical at least,” he said. “You made the rules to suit yourself, so stick to them, man. Don’t think you can flop from one side to the other like some sort of moral acrobat. It won’t work, I tell you. You’ve lost the privilege of hating sin. That belongs to us poor fools who believe in right and wrong.”
“All right,” Carmody said slowly. “By my rules, I’ve got to get the men who killed Eddie. Right or wrong, you watch.”
“It will do you no good,” the priest said.
“I’m not trying to save myself. I’m after a killer.”
Father Ahearn looked at him in silence for a few seconds, all the bright anger fading slowly from his face. “Well, I’ll be going on,” he said.
“Look, wait a minute. Won’t you try to understand this?”
“No, I must be going on,” he glanced around the room and shook his head slowly. “There was a lot of goodness and decency here, Mike. Stay a bit. Maybe some of it will soak back into you. Good-by, son.”
Twenty minutes after the priest had gone the telephone rang. Carmody answered it and a man’s voice said, “Is this Mike Carmody, the brother of that cop who got shot?”
Carmody had waited for the call because he knew the value of tipsters; the man with a grudge, the citizen who wanted to assist the law anonymously, even the busybodies — they had helped to break dozens of his cases.
About one in a hundred tips turned out to be helpful. But there was no short cut to find the occasionally reliable informant. The chronic alarmists and crackpots who flooded the police switchboard with calls every day could only be sifted out by patient investigation.
“Yes, this is Mike Carmody,” he said. “Who’s this?”
“The name wouldn’t mean nothing to you. But I’m sorry about your brother.”
“So am I,” Carmody said. Would Father Ahearn take exception to that? he thought bitterly. Could he at least be sorry? “Well, what’s on your mind?”
“Do you remember Longie Tucker?”
“Sure,” Carmody said. The man’s voice told him nothing; it was high and thin, with a tremor of nerves or fear in it. “What about Longie Tucker?” he asked. Tucker was a local hoodlum who’d drifted out to California six or eight years ago, a big and brutal man with black hair
and blunt dark features.
“He’s back in town, that’s all. I saw him a couple of months ago. And his hair is gray now. The description of your brother’s killer said blond hair. But at night under a street light gray hair might look blond.”
Carmody nodded slowly. “Where did you see Tucker?”
“In a taproom on Archer Street, right at the corner of Twelfth. I thought of him when I read about your brother.”
“I’ll run this down,” Carmody said. “Thanks.”
“I hope it’s him, Mr. Carmody.”
“What’s your interest in this? Paying off an old score?”
“You might say that,” the man said in an unsteady voice. “Longie Tucker killed my son. I couldn’t prove it, but he did it all right. And my boy never did any harm to anybody. He just got in the way. Well, I won’t bother you with it. But I hope he’s the man you want.”
The phone clicked in Carmody’s ear. He frowned at it a moment, then broke the connection and dialed Police. The record room would know where Tucker was hanging out. He wasn’t wanted for anything here, as far as Carmody could recall, but some stoolie would have tipped off the police that he was back in town. The clerk at Records answered and Carmody asked for the chief, Sergeant Hogan. After a short wait Hogan came on, and Carmody asked him about Longie Tucker.
“We had a tip when he drifted back to the city,” Hogan said. “The detectives in his district watched him for a few weeks, but he seems to be behaving himself. Wouldn’t swear he’ll keep it up though. He’s a stormy one.”
“Where is he living?”
“Just a minute... here it is... 211 Eighteenth Street. A rotten neighborhood, and just where he belongs. Anything else, Mike?”
“No, that’s all.”
Hogan hesitated, then said, “Tough about the kid brother, Mike.”
“Yes, it was,” Carmody said. “But we’ll get the guy who did it.”
“You’re damn right.”
Carmody hesitated a moment after replacing the phone, debating whether to run this down himself, or to pass it on to Wilson. It was now one-thirty. He wanted to see Nancy as soon as possible; now he knew she’d been lying when she said she had nothing on Ackerman. But Longie Tucker was an even stronger lure. When he got into his car he headed for 211 Eighteenth Street.
10
It was an unpainted wooden building set in the middle of a block of municipal decay. Carmody got hold of the owner, a sullen little Spaniard, and asked him about Longie Tucker.
“There is one man on the third floor,” the Spaniard said, shrugging carelessly. “I don’t care about his name. Maybe you want that one, eh? I go to tell him.”
“You go finish your lunch,” Carmody said.
“You copper?”
“You just finish lunch, understand, amigo?” Carmody said quietly.
“Sure, I don’t care,” the man said and closed his door.
Carmody went up the stairs quietly. The wallpaper was torn and filthy, and he breathed through his mouth to avoid the greasy, stale smell of the building. Two doors stood open on the third floor, revealing the interiors of small, messy rooms. The third and last door was closed. Carmody eased his gun from the holster and tried the knob. It turned under his hand. He pushed the door inward and stepped into the room, his finger curved and hard against the trigger of his gun.
Longie Tucker lay fully dressed on a sagging bed, one hand trailing on the dusty floor. The room was oppressively hot; the single window was closed and the air was heavy and foul. Tucker breathed slowly and deeply, his body shuddering with the effort. There was an empty whiskey bottle near his hand, and two boxes of pills.
Carmody shook his shoulder until his eyelids fluttered, and then pulled him to a sitting position.
Tucker blinked at him, confused and frightened. “What’s the beef?” he muttered.
Carmody’s hopes died as he stared at Tucker’s drawn face, at the gray skin shot here and there with tiny networks of ruptured blood vessels. The man was half his former size, a sick, decaying husk.
Tucker grinned at him suddenly, disclosing rows of bad teeth. “I get you now, friend. Mike Carmody. Is that right?”
“That’s it,” Carmody said, putting his gun away.
“I didn’t do the job on your brother,” Tucker said. “I couldn’t do a job on a fly. I ain’t left the room in two weeks. I got the bug in my lungs. Ain’t that a riot? I go west and get the con.”
“Who killed my brother? Do you know?”
“God’s truth, I don’t. I heard the job was open but I wouldn’t have touched it if I could.”
“You heard about it? Did they advertise in the papers?”
“Word gets around.”
Carmody rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead and turned toward the door.
“Mike, can you spare a buck? I need something to drink.”
“No.”
“Coppers,” Tucker said, making an ugly word of it.
Carmody looked down at him coldly. “Why didn’t you save the money you got for shooting people in the back?” Then, disgusted and angry with himself, he took out a roll of bills and threw a twenty on Tucker’s bed. “Don’t die thinking all coppers are no good,” he said.
“Thanks, Mike,” Tucker said, grinning weakly as he reached for the money.
Carmody drove across the city to the Empire Hotel and went up past the police detail to Karen’s apartment. She opened the door for him and he walked into the cool, dim room. The shades had been drawn against the afternoon sun and Nancy was lying on the studio couch, asleep, an arm thrown over her eyes.
“Must you wake her?” Karen asked him. “She just got to sleep.”
“Yes.”
“You have to, I suppose,” she said dryly.
“Look, I didn’t invent this game,” Carmody said. Then he felt his temper slipping; the pressure inside him had reached the danger point. Wilson, Father Ahearn and now Karen. They couldn’t wait to give him a gratuitous kick in the teeth. “Stop yapping at me,” he said abruptly. “If you think I’m a heel write your congressman about it. But lay off me; understand?”
“I understand,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
The reply confused him; it was simple and straightforward, with no sarcasm running under it. He sat down on the sofa facing the studio couch and lit a cigarette. “I’ll give her a few minutes,” he said. “How has she been?”
“Not too good. She cried a lot and tried to leave several times. I gave her a few drinks and that seemed to help.”
“She had a rough time.”
“Yes, she told me about it,” Karen said. She sat down beside him on the sofa and shook her head slowly. “What kind of men are they, Mike?”
“Big men, tough men,” he said. “With the world in their pockets. They don’t believe in anything but the fix. They never heard of Judgment Day.”
She didn’t answer him. He glanced at her and saw that she was rubbing her forehead with the tips of her fingers. She was wearing a white linen dress and her hair was brushed back above her ears and held with a black ribbon. The faint light in the room ran along her slim legs as she moved one foot in a restless circle. She looked used up; pale and very tired.
“She told me about your break with Ackerman,” she said quietly. “And the fight. She thinks you’re the greatest guy in the world.” Again her voice was simple and straightforward, with no bitterness or sarcasm in it. “That’s why I told you I was sorry. You tried to save him. I didn’t know that this morning.”
“I was a big help,” he said bitterly.
“I can’t believe he’s dead,” she said, moving her head slowly from side to side. “Just last night he sat here full of health and hope and big plans. And now he’s gone.”
“Well, he lived in a straight line,” Carmody said, “no detours, no short cuts.” He spoke without reflection or deliberation, but the words sounded with a truth he hadn’t understood before; it was something to say of a man that the shape and purpos
e of his life had remained constant against all pressure and temptation.
“It’s been a ghastly day,” she whispered.
“You ought to get some rest.” Without thinking of what he was doing, he put a hand on her back and began to massage the taut muscles of her shoulders and neck. He felt the malleable quality of her body under his fingers, and the small thin points of her shoulder blades, and he wondered irrelevantly what held her together, what supported all of her poise and strength. There was something inside her that was impervious to attack. She had countered his contempt with a confident anger, as if hating him was a privilege she had earned. Father Ahearn’s words struck him suddenly: Hating sin... belongs to us poor fools who believe in right and wrong. Was that her pitch? That she was on the side of the angels?
“Don’t do that,” she said suddenly.
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t want you to touch me.”
Carmody took his hand away from her slowly. “I’m not good enough, is that it?”
“Don’t make a big thing out of it,” she said wearily. “I just don’t want you to touch me, that’s all. Not because I think you aren’t good enough and not because I don’t like it.” She looked at him, her face a small white blur in the dim room. “Can’t you understand that?”
“Wait until you’re asked before you say no,” he said, wanting to hurt her as she had hurt him.
“That’s a cheap thing to say. It isn’t what I meant, Mike, I was just—”
“Cheap?” he said, cutting across her sentence. “That sounds funny coming from you.” There had been a delayed reaction to the feel of her body under his hand; now the memory of it crowded sharply and turbulently against his control. “What about Danny Nimo?” he said, his voice rising angrily. “Would you call that just a little cheap around the edges?”
“Oh, damn you, damn you,” she said, pounding a fist against her knee. “That’s all you’ve got on your mind. You’re infatuated with evil. Goodness bores you. Because the devil is more exciting to you than God. He’s your kind of people, a real sharpie. All right, I’ll tell you about Danny Nimo.”
Rogue Cop Page 13
