“I’ve got an idea.”
“Right now we’re going to where Dobbs used to live. A guy in the Intelligencer’s personnel section gave me his old address. It’s in Avondale, in a pretty average neighborhood. Dobbs lived there with his mother and father. But they’ve all been gone for a long time.”
“We’ll have to ring a lot of doorbells to find someone who knew them,” Carmody said.
“I can’t think of any short cut,” Murphy said, and rubbed a hand wearily over his face. “I wish there was. I could use some sleep.”
They parked in front of the two-story wooden house in which the Dobbs family had lived, and got out of the car. The street was shady and quiet, in a neighborhood that was deteriorating steadily but gradually.
“You want the odd or even addresses?” Murphy said dryly.
“I’ll take the other side. Let’s go.”
It was in the middle of the afternoon and two blocks from the Dobbs home that Carmody got his hands on a lead. She was a pleasant little woman, starched and clean in a blue house dress, and she had known the Dobbses very well. “Funny you should ask,” she said, tilting her gray head at Carmody. “I was just thinking of Ed and Martha the other day. Something brought them back to mind, what I just can’t remember. But come in, won’t you? No sense baking there in the sun.”
In the dim old-fashioned parlor, Carmody said, “Do you remember when they moved away?”
“Yes, it was just before the war. The Second World War, I mean. About ’40 or ’41. Ed quit his job on the cars, and off they went. To California.”
“Did you know their son? Billy Dobbs?”
“Indeed I did. He was a quiet, steady youngster, and got himself a fine job on the paper. Took pictures for them. We used to see his name on them sometimes. Fires, accidents, all sorts of things you’d never expect little Billy Dobbs to be mixed up in.”
“But he quit his job, didn’t he?”
“That’s right. Moved off to another paper. It worried his mother, I can tell you, but it turned out pretty well, I guess.”
“Do you know what paper he went to?”
“His mother told me but I forgot,” the woman said, with a little sigh.
“Anybody around here ever hear from the Dobbses?”
“No, not for years anyway. Old Mr. Johnson, he’s dead now, looked them up when he was in California. He was out seeing his son who was in camp there, you see. And the Dobbses had come into good luck. Some relative of theirs in Australia had died, they told Mr. Johnson, and left them a nice little bit of money. They were living in style, he said. Flower garden, nice home, a maid even.” She smiled and shook her head. “A far cry from the days when they were on the cars.”
“Was their son around?”
She frowned. “Mr. Johnson never said anything about Billy...”
Carmody went quickly down the stairs to the sidewalk and looked along the street for Murphy. He saw him in the next block and yelled at him to get his attention. When Murphy turned, Carmody shouted, “Let’s go. I’ve got it...”
“Everything fits,” Carmody said, as they headed back toward his home. “Dobbs did take pictures of the stick-up. He waited two years, probably protected himself from every angle and then parlayed them into a pension plan.”
“Nice guy, Dobbs,” Murphy said, nodding. “Didn’t forget the old folks either. The thing is, I guess, to find Dobbs.”
“We won’t find him,” Carmody said. “Ackerman has sent him on the road by now. Dobbs is on his way to South America or Newfoundland, I’d bet.”
“Then we got to find the pictures,” Murphy said.
“I want to think about that angle a little,” Carmody said.
“We got something good here, Mike. This is what Delaney had on Ackerman. He must know about Dobbs. And that pressure was strong enough to make Ackerman take the big risk of killing your brother. So if we get Dobbs’ pictures we get Bill Ackerman. On a rap he can’t beat.”
“That’s it.” Carmody glanced at Murphy’s tired profile. “You’d have made a good cop, George.”
“So would you, Mike,” Murphy said. Then he rubbed his lips with the back of his hand. “Forget that; okay? It’s no time for cracks.”
“Nobody’s mad,” Carmody said bitterly.
They said good-by in front of the house and Carmody went inside and tossed his hat on the piano. He was on his way to the kitchen for a beer when the phone began to ring. Picking it up, he said, “Yes?”
“Mike, this is Karen. The police took me downtown this morning to look at more pictures. There was no guard here while I was away.” Her voice began to tremble. “Nancy’s gone, Mike.”
“Who picked you up?” he said sharply.
“A Captain Green. From the records station.”
Green was on Ackerman’s leash, Carmody knew. Technically, he had the right to bring a witness downtown... And someone else could have pulled off the police guard... Carmody swore furiously.
“Stay right there,” he said. “I’m coming over.”
Nancy might have walked out by herself, he thought, as he ran down to his car. But in his heart he knew he was kidding himself. This was Ackerman’s work. He wanted her and he had taken her.
12
It was twenty minutes later when he reached Karen’s apartment. She let him in and sat down on the edge of the sofa, locking her hands together in her lap.
“I’ve got to know just when this happened,” he said. “Right to the minute.”
“I’ll try to remember.”
Carmody saw that she was holding herself under control with an effort. Her small face was pale and strained, and her lower lip was trembling slightly. “If you can hang on you’ll be helping her,” he said. Sitting beside her, he took her clenched hands between his and rubbed them gently. “Start from the time the police picked you up here.”
“That was ten o’clock. Captain Green got here then and said he wanted me to come downtown. I told him I’d get ready. Nancy was frightened. She didn’t want to stay alone, but I said it would be all right.” Karen drew a long breath and a little tremor went through her body. “I didn’t get back until two-thirty. Captain Green showed me dozens of pictures and took his time about it. When we got back he made me wait downstairs until he radioed the local district and told them to put the police details back at the apartment. That was the first I knew that they’d been taken off. I was scared then. And when I came in I saw that she was gone.”
Carmody looked around the room. “Was there any sign of a struggle?”
“No. But she left a diamond ring on the basin in the bathroom.” Her hands tightened in his. “Wouldn’t she have taken that if she decided to walk out?”
“I don’t know. She might have forgotten it.” Carmody didn’t believe this and he saw that Karen didn’t either. “We’ll find her,” he said, squeezing her hand tightly. Then he went quickly to the phone in the kitchen and dialed Police. It took him a minute to get through to Wilson. “Jim, Mike Carmody,” he said. “I want to report a missing person. It could be a kidnap job.”
“I’ve been trying to get you, Mike. You’ve got to come in. Myerdahl didn’t buy my brief on you. He insists—”
“Jim, hold that, will you?” Carmody said. “This is the lead to Ackerman. Let’s get it rolling. We can talk about Myerdahl later.”
Wilson hesitated. Then he said, “Let’s have it,” in his crisp official voice.
“The missing person is a girl, Nancy Drake. She’s blonde with blue eyes and a good figure. About five-three, a hundred and ten, I’d say.”
“Nancy Drake? Isn’t that Dan Beaumonte’s mistress?”
“That’s right. She left, or was kidnaped from, the Empire Hotel this morning, sometime between ten o’clock and two-thirty.”
“The Empire? That’s Karen Stephanson’s hotel, right?”
“Yes. I stuck Nancy in her apartment. I thought she’d be safe here with guards at both doors.”
“Damn it, what are you t
rying to do?” Wilson demanded angrily. “Did it occur to you that Beaumonte’s girl might have blown the head off our only witness? You said you’d work straight with me, Mike. But you can’t drop the prima donna act, even for your brother’s murder.”
“I guessed wrong,” Carmody said. “I didn’t figure Ackerman would pull the guard detail off.”
“That was a mighty bad guess. Look, now; I’ll get an alarm out for this Nancy girl. But you get in here, understand? And bring your badge and gun. Myerdahl wants ’em both.”
“Okay,” Carmody said bitterly, and replaced the phone with a bang. When he returned to the living room Karen was pacing the floor nervously. “I can’t forget that I talked her into helping you,” she said.
“This isn’t your fault. It’s mine.”
“She’d just written a letter to her agent,” Karen said, putting the palms of her hands against her forehead. “She was sure she’d started back uphill.”
“The police of three states will be looking for her,” Carmody said. “Remember that.” He put his hands gently on her slim square shoulders. “I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything,” he said.
Carmody walked through the swinging wooden gates of the Homicide Bureau twenty minutes later, and nodded to Dirksen and Abrams who were working at their desks with a suspicious show of industry. Dirksen pointed to Wilson’s closed door and said softly, “Very high-priced help at work, Mike. Myerdahl and the D.A.”
Carmody smiled faintly at him and rapped on the door. Wilson opened it and said, “Come on in, Mike.”
“Anything on the girl yet?”
“No, but the alarm is out.”
Carmody walked into the office and took off his hat. Captain Myerdahl, acting superintendent of the department, sat in a straight chair beside Wilson’s desk, puffing on a short black pipe. Standing at the windows was Lansing Powell, the city’s District Attorney. Myerdahl was a short stocky man with a coarse dark complexion, and small blue eyes that glittered like splinters of ice behind his rimless glasses. He was a tough and shrewd cop, who took his responsibilities with fanatic intensity. As a rookie he had supported his wife and family on two-thirds of his meager salary and spent the remainder on Berlitz lessons to modify his heavy German accent. He had moved up slowly through the ranks, never compromising his standards, and giving every job the full measure of his dogged strength and intelligence. Detectives and patrolmen hated the discipline he enforced but they relished working for him; in Myerdahl’s district a cop could do his job twenty-four hours a day without worrying about stepping on sensitive toes.
Myerdahl stood solidly behind his men when they were doing honest work, and he couldn’t be intimidated by threats or pressure. Now he looked up at Carmody and took the pipe from his mouth. “I asked the lieutenant for an unfitness report on you this morning,” he said bluntly. “But I didn’t get it. Instead I got some excuses. Well, I don’t take excuses. I’ve got no use for wealthy cops. They’re in the wrong business. So you better find another one.”
Carmody’s expression remained impassive. “They should have tied a can to me years ago,” he said. “Was that all you had to say?”
“That’s all I got to say.”
“How about listening to me then?” Carmody said quietly. “I’ve got a case against Bill Ackerman. I want to give it to you.”
“Hah! You think I’d believe you?”
“Forget about me. Listen to the facts. Ackerman’s your target, isn’t he?”
“I’ll get him with men who aren’t carrying his money.”
“Now just a minute,” Powell said, cutting calmly through the tension. “I’m interested in Carmody’s information, Superintendent.” He came around Wilson’s desk, a tall, slender man who wore horn-rimmed glasses and conservative clothes. There was a scholarly, good-humored air about him, the intangible endowment of a good family, excellent schools and a background of noteworthy achievement in the law and politics. But his graceful manners camouflaged a shrewd and vigorous intelligence, as dozens of defense attorneys had learned to their clients’ dismay. Perching on the comer of Wilson’s desk, he smiled impersonally at Carmody. “In my job I’m forced to use instruments of dubious moral value,” he said. “I understand the superintendent’s position, but I can’t afford the philosophic luxury of observing absolute standards. Call it fighting fire with fire, or whatever you like. I don’t justify it or condemn it. It is a condition I accept. However, let me say this much, without any personal rancor, I don’t like using crooked cops. To me they’re a lost and frightening breed of men, and I would prefer to keep as far away from them as possible.” He studied Carmody’s hard impassive face, a curious frown gathering about his eyes. “You’re what some people call a smart operator, I suppose. I’ve known others like you, and I think I understand your reasoning processes. When you join the force it occurs to you in time that there is a way to make the job pay off more handsomely than the taxpayers intended. In short, to cheat, to trade on your position of public trust. What doesn’t occur to you is that the same course is open to every man in the department. They can cheat, or play it straight. Thank God, most of them play it straight. But you don’t give them credit for that. You see their honesty as stupidity, their integrity as a lack of nerve. This is why I find you rather frightening.” Powell shrugged and crossed his long legs. But he was still frowning thoughtfully at Carmody. “You rationalize your dishonesty with more of the same deadly cynicism,” he said slowly. “You say, ‘If I don’t take the graft then someone else will.’ This isn’t logic, of course, it’s merely an expression of your lack of faith. If you were logical you would test the proposition by being honest. Instead, you simply assume that everyone else is dishonest. You prejudge the world by yourself and steal with the comforting defense that you’re only beating the other crooks to it. The thing you—”
“That’s an excellent speech, sir,” Carmody said abruptly. “I’d like to hear the rest of it sometime. I mean that. But I want to talk now.”
Powell nodded. “Okay, Carmody. What have you to tell us?”
“A story about a man named Dobbs. A man Ackerman is afraid of.” He gave it to them in rapid detail, his trained mind presenting each fact in its damaging order. When he finished the attitude of the men facing him had changed; Wilson was grinning with excitement, Myerdahl had hunched forward to the edge of his chair and Powell was walking back and forth before the desk with a grim little look on his face. And the atmosphere of the room had changed, too; it was charged now with excitement and tension.
“Well,” Carmody said, “is it a case?”
“It may very well be,” Powell said. “It’s a logical inference that Dobbs took photographs of Ackerman participating in a robbery and murder. The robbery isn’t important, but the murder can still send him to the chair. And I’m quite sure that Dobbs has taken every precaution to make his case against Ackerman airtight. The pictures are probably in a vault, and his attorney probably has a letter instructing him to present them to the police in the event anything sudden and fatal happens to Dobbs. Ackerman must be efficiently trapped, or he wouldn’t have paid off all these years. He would simply have shot him. So our job is to find the pictures.”
“We can get them,” Myerdahl said, thumping the desk with his fist. “A court order can open vaults. And we’ll smoke out his lawyer. Or if the letter is with his family, we’ll drag them back and make them talk.”
“It will finish Ackerman,” Powell said, turning to Carmody. “But it doesn’t touch Beaumonte or the organization.”
“I can wrap them up for you,” Carmody said.
“How’s that?”
“I’ve got a witness they won’t like,” Carmody said. “A man who knows every name, every date and every pay-off connected with the city’s rackets. He’s been on Beaumonte’s payroll for six years and he’s willing to talk. Can you use him?”
“I most certainly can,” Powell said. “Who is he?”
“Me,” Carmody said quietly.
A silence grew and stretched in the smoky room. Wilson let out his breath slowly and Myerdahl rubbed his jaw and studied Carmody suspiciously. “Well,” Powell said at last. “You’ll be an almighty big help. But since there’s a good chance you’ll go to jail, why are you doing this?”
“I’m tired of that question,” Carmody said, shrugging his wide shoulders. “And what difference does it make? If we get a case, what else matters?”
“Several things,” Powell said, smiling slightly. “The most important thing, however, is to make men like you recognize the difference between right and wrong, to make you realize that you’re responsible for understanding the distinction. We can get Ackerman and Beaumonte a good deal easier than the border-line cases who support them by a cynical indifference to their moral obligations. That’s why I’m interested in your motive. Is it just a grudge? Or is it something a little different, a little better perhaps?”
Carmody was about to speak when the phone rang. Wilson picked it up and said, “Yes, go ahead.” He listened a moment, a slow frown spreading over his face, and then he nodded and said shortly, “Let me know the minute anything else comes in.” Replacing the phone he looked at Carmody. “That might be Nancy Drake, Mike. Radio has picked up a report from a New Jersey traffic car. They’ve got an accident a mile south of Exit 21 on the Turnpike. The victim fits the description of Nancy Drake. But the identification isn’t positive.”
Rogue Cop Page 15
