“It’s positive,” Carmody said slowly. “They took her out and killed her. Because she gave me the lead that may hang them.” There was no anger in him, only a cold and terrible determination. He looked from Powell to Myerdahl, breathing slowly and deeply. “You two did all the talking so far,” he said. “Now listen: while you were talking they killed her like they’d swat a fly. Dobbs will be next, then me, then any other fool who gets in their way. They know they can get away with it because while their guns are banging you sit talking and drowning out the noise. There’s no case against them here, there’s nothing but talk. And I’m sick of it. You treated me like a leper because I wanted to help and I’m sick of that, too. Now I’m going to settle this without any more conversation.”
Carmody backed toward the door and Wilson said, “Don’t go off half-cocked, Mike.”
“More talk,” Carmody said, smiling unpleasantly. “Keep it up! Mr. Powell, tell them about right and wrong and the evil in the city’s scout packs. Myerdahl, come up with some stories of your early days as a cop. Talk your heads off, but for God’s sake don’t do anything.”
“I’d suggest you relax if I thought it would do any good,” Powell said pleasantly.
“You’re suspended!” Myerdahl shouted, leaping to his feet.
“You’re suspended, too,” Carmody said. “In a big tub of virtuous incompetence. Maybe that’s why I went crooked. Because I got tired of you good little people who can’t get anything done.”
He walked out and pulled the door shut behind him with an explosive bang.
State troopers had channeled all northbound traffic into one lane to by-pass the scene of the accident. The darkness was split by the red lights of squad cars parked on the grass off the highway. Carmody pulled up behind them and walked down to the gully where a fire-blackened convertible lay upside down, its wheels pointing grotesquely and helplessly at the sky. Men were working around it, measuring skid tracks, beginning the tests on brakes, wheel alignment, ignition system. A uniformed patrolman stood beside a small, blanket-covered figure on the ground. Carmody walked over to him and said, “Has the doctor gone?”
“Yes. He couldn’t do anything. What’s your business?” he added.
“Metropolitan police,” Carmody said opening his wallet. “I want to check an identification.”
“Sure, Sarge. Go ahead.”
Carmody knelt down and drew the blanket gently away from the small figure on the ground. He stared at her a moment, his face grim and hard in the flaring shadows thrown by the police lights. The fire, rather miraculously, hadn’t touched her face or hair. She must have crawled halfway out the window before the smoke and flame got her, he thought. For half a moment he stared at the frozen, inanimate pain on her face, at the leaves and twigs caught in her tangled blonde hair. He kept his eyes away from the rest of her body. You didn’t get back to show business, he thought. You just got murdered. He put the blanket over her face and got to his feet.
“Do you know what happened?” he asked the uniformed cop.
“I heard the talk,” the cop said respectfully; the look in Carmody’s face made him anxious to help. “She was alone in the car when the first motorist got to her and pulled her out. But nobody saw the crash. She lost control about fifty yards from the bridge, judging from the skid tracks. Then she barreled down here and tipped over.”
It was phony all the way, Carmody knew. Nancy had never been behind the wheel of a car in her life.
“She didn’t have much of a chance,” the cop said, and shook his head.
“Not a ghost.”
Carmody walked up the grade to his car. The single line of traffic passed him on his left, moving slowly despite the shouted orders from the troopers. Everyone wants a glimpse of tragedy, he thought, while faces peered out of the slowly moving cars, eager for the sounds and smells of disaster. Carmody looked down the hill at the blanket-draped figure on the ground, and then he slipped his car into gear and headed back to the city.
Half an hour later he rapped on the door of Beaumonte’s apartment. Footsteps sounded and Beaumonte, in his shirt-sleeves, opened the door, the big padded roll of his body swelling tightly against the waistband of his trousers. Without a jacket he didn’t look formidable; he was just another fat man in a silk shirt and loud suspenders.
“I’m in kind of a hurry, Mike,” he said, not moving aside. “What’s on your mind?”
The long room behind was empty and Carmody saw three pigskin bags in the middle of the floor. “You’re taking a trip?” he said.
“That’s right.” Beaumonte’s smile was a grudging concession which didn’t relieve the annoyance in his face. “I’m catching a plane in half an hour.”
“You asked me to find Nancy,” Carmody said. He walked into the room, forcing Beaumonte to step aside, and tossed his hat in a chair.
“Well, where is she?” Beaumonte asked him anxiously.
Carmody faced him with his hands on his hips. “She’s under a blanket, Dan. They pulled her out of a wreck on the Turnpike about an hour ago. She’s dead.”
“Dead?” Beaumonte stared at him incredulously. “No, you’re kidding,” he whispered. His face had turned white and his lips were beginning to tremble. “She can’t be dead,” he said, shaking his head quickly.
“I saw her. She burned to death.”
Beaumonte put both hands over his face and lurched blindly toward the sofa. He sat down, his body sprawling slackly on the cushions, and began to cry in a soft, anguished voice.
Carmody lit a cigarette and flipped the match toward the ashtray. He watched Beaumonte’s efforts to get himself under control with no expression at all on his face.
“I loved that girl,” Beaumonte said, in a choking voice. His eyes were closed but tears welled under the lids and coursed slowly down his white cheeks. “I loved her and she never looked at another guy. She was all mine. Where did it happen? Who was with her?”
“She was alone,” Carmody said.
It took several seconds for this to register. When it did, Beaumonte opened his eyes and struggled up to a sitting position. “She never drove, she couldn’t,” he said hoarsely. “What are you saying, Mike?”
“She was murdered,” Carmody said.
Beaumonte shook his head so quickly that tears were shaken from his fat cheeks. “Ackerman said he wouldn’t hurt her,” he cried in a rising voice. “He said he wouldn’t touch her.”
“And you believed him. Like I believed you when you said you’d give Eddie forty-eight hours.”
“Why did he kill her?” Beaumonte said, mumbling the words through his trembling lips. “He didn’t have to do that. I could have kept her quiet.”
“She was killed because she told me about Dobbs,” Carmody said coldly. “That’s going to hang Ackerman. And it may hang you, too, Dan.”
Beaumonte began to weep. “Mike, please. I been through enough.”
“You’ve put hundreds of people on the same rack,” Carmody said bitterly. “I could laugh at you if you were lying in hell with your back broken. Now get this: you and Ackerman are going down the drain and I helped pull the plug. I’m going with you, but that seems a fair price. You can sweat out the next six months in jail, or you can die right now. The choice is yours.”
“What do you mean?”
Carmody took out his revolver and shoved the barrel deep into Beaumonte’s wide stomach. “I want the name of the guy who killed my brother,” he said gently. “And his address.”
“Ackerman made the plans,” Beaumonte said, his voice going up in a squeal. “He got a guy named Joie Langley from Chicago.”
“Is he still in town?”
Beaumonte wet his lips as he stared into Carmody’s cold gray eyes. “Don’t shoot, Mike,” he whispered. “I’m talking. Langley’s staying in a rooming house on Broome Street. The address is 4842. Ackerman didn’t want him to leave while there was a witness who could finger him. If he couldn’t get rid of the witness, then he planned to get rid of L
angley. Langley’s got no money at all, and he can’t move. He’s a bad kid, Mike.”
“I’ll make an angel out of him,” Carmody said, putting away his gun. “Now don’t move until I’m gone.”
When the door closed Beaumonte struggled to his feet, breathing heavily, his eyes glistening with tears. Sweat was streaming down his body, plastering his silk shirt to the slabs of flesh that armored his ribs. He walked around the room, wandering in a circle, occasionally moaning like a man goaded by an intense, recurring pain. Finally, he went to the telephone, lifted the receiver and dialed a number. Staring at the wall, he wet his lips and attempted desperately to get himself under control.
A voice said, “Yes?”
“Ackerman? This is Dan.”
“I thought you’d gone. I told you the ceiling was ready to fall in,” Ackerman told him shortly.
“Carmody’s picking up Joie Langley, Bill. He’s spread the story about Dobbs. Now he’s after his brother’s killer. I thought you’d like to know.”
“Is he alone?”
“Yes.” Beaumonte put the phone down abruptly and walked to the bar. While he was making himself a strong drink the phone began to ring. Beaumonte stared at it and sipped his drink. He wasn’t crying any more; his pale face was set in a haggard expression of hate. “Go after him, Bill,” he whispered to the ringing phone. “He’ll pay you off for me, he’ll send you to hell.”
13
Broome Street stretched from the river to the heart of the city and terminated in a dead end a half-block below the Municipal Building. Its upper section was smart and prosperous, with excellent shops and department stores facing each other across a broad asphalt surface. But the street changed character as it wound through warehouses and slums to the river. Overhead lights gave way to street lamps set far apart, and the gutters were clotted with newspapers, garbage and refuse. The tall, red brick buildings had been converted into rooming houses for dock laborers, and the neon signs of cheap bars glittered at every corner.
Carmody parked in the 4800 block and when he switched off the motor a dark thick silence settled around him. The warehouses and garages were locked up at this hour, and the dawn-rising longshoremen were in bed for the night. Moving quietly, he walked down the empty sidewalk to number 4842, a narrow, four-storied brick building, identical with a dozen others in the block. He ascended the short stoop of stone stairs, hollowed by decades of use, and tried the door. It was locked, as he’d expected it would be. He rang the night bell.
A few minutes later a stockily built Irishman wearing only a pair of trousers peered out at him with sleepy, belligerent eyes.
“Now what’s your pleasure?” he said.
Carmody held out his badge and let the slanting light from the hallway fall on it. “Talk as natural as you can,” he said quietly. “Answer my questions. Have you got a spare room?”
The man cleared his throat and stared at the badge. “We’re all full up,” he said.
“Think I’d have better luck somewhere else in the block?”
“Couldn’t say for sure. You can try across the street, at 4839. They might have an extra.”
“A big blond man with a wide face,” Carmody said quietly. “If he’s here nod your head.”
The man’s eyes became round and solemn. He nodded slowly and jerked his thumb in a furtive gesture to his right. “Just beside me,” he said, breathing out the words. “Front room.”
“Thanks, anyway,” Carmody said, and moved silently past him into the small airless hallway. He closed the front door and pointed to the stairs. The man needed no urging; he took the steps two at a time, his bare feet noiseless on the faded carpet.
Carmody waited until he had turned out of sight at the second-floor landing. Then he rapped sharply on the door of the front room. His breathing was even and slow, and his hands hung straight down at his sides.
Bedsprings creaked beyond the door and footsteps moved across the floor.
“Who’s that?” a voice said quietly.
“Message from Bill Ackerman,” Carmody said.
The door opened an inch and stopped. Carmody saw one eye shining softly from the light in the hallway, and below that the cold blue glint of a gun barrel.
“Walk straight in when I open the door,” the voice said. “Stop in the middle of the room and don’t turn around. Get that straight.”
“Okay, I’ve got it.”
“Start walking.”
The door swung open. Carmody entered the dark room with the hall light shining on his back. He was a perfect target if the killer wanted to shoot. But he wasn’t worried about that. Not yet.
A switch clicked and a bare bulb above his head flooded the room with white harsh light. He heard the door swing shut, a lock click and then a gun barrel pressed hard against his spine. The man’s free hand went over him with expert speed, found his revolver and flipped it free of the holster.
“Take off your hat now,” he said. “Real slow. Raise it with both hands.”
He knows his racket, Carmody thought, lifting his hat. Occasionally even a cop might forget that a small gun could be carried on the top of a man’s head under a fedora.
“Lemme look at you now,” the man said.
Turning slowly, Carmody faced the man who had killed his brother. Look down here, Eddie, he prayed. This is for you.
“You’re Joie Langley, right?” he said quietly.
“Don’t make conversation. What’s with Ackerman?”
Langley’s youth surprised Carmody. He was twenty-four, or twenty-five at most, a big muscular kid with tousled blond hair and sullen eyes set close together in a wide brutal face. The gun he held looked like a finger of his huge hand. He was wearing loafers, slacks and an unbuttoned yellow sports shirt that exposed his solid hairy chest. About Eddie’s age, Carmody thought, but a different breed. He was a hard and savage killer; Eddie wouldn’t have had a chance with him, even from the front.
“Ackerman wants you to clear out,” Carmody said. “I’m a cop, and I work for him. I’ll set it up for you.”
“A cop?” Langley said softly, and took a step back from Carmody. He went down in a springy crouch, his sullen eyes narrowing with suspicion. “I don’t like this, buddy. The whole deal stinks. I’m the hottest guy in the country but he won’t pay off, won’t let me clear out. Where’s your badge, buddy?”
“I’ll take my wallet from my hip pocket,” Carmody said quietly. “I’ll do it nice and slow. You’re getting all excited, sonny. What’s the matter? This your first job?”
Langley swore at him impersonally. Then he said, “I’m making sure it ain’t my last, that’s all. Take out your frontpiece.”
Carmody opened his wallet and flashed the badge. “Look at the name on the identification card,” he said. “That’s important, too.”
Langley stared at him, the gun steady in his big fist. “I like this less all the time, buddy,” he said.
“You’d be spending your dough in Las Vegas right now if you hadn’t fumbled the job,” Carmody said. “Look at the name in that wallet. Then we’ll get moving.”
Langley took the wallet in his free hand and held it at eye-level. He was still watching Carmody. “You sound like you think you’re tough,” he said casually.
“Look at the name.”
Langley grinned and glanced at the identification card, keeping the gun fixed steadily on Carmody’s stomach.
“Michael T. Carmody,” he said, reading the name slowly. A puzzled line deepened above his eyes. “That’s the name of the guy I—”
Carmody had raised his hand casually — as if he were going to scratch his chin — and now he struck down at Langley’s wrist, gambling on the hoodlum’s momentary confusion and the speed and power of his own body.
He almost lost his bet.
Langley jerked back from the blow, his lips flattening in a snarl, and the rock-hard edge of Carmody’s hand missed his wrist — but it struck the top of his thumb and knocked his finger away from th
e trigger. For a split second the gun dangled impotently in his hand, and Carmody made another desperate bet on himself and whipped a left hook into Langley’s face. It would have been safer to try for the gun; if the hook missed he’d be dead before he could throw another punch. But it didn’t miss; Langley’s head snapped back as Carmody’s fist exploded under his jaw and the gun spun from his hand to the floor. Carmody kicked it under the bed and began to laugh. Then he hit Langley in the stomach with a right that raised him two inches off the floor. When Langley bent over, gasping for breath, Carmody brought his knee up into his face and knocked him halfway across the room.
“It was your last job, sonny,” he said, grabbing the slack of the sports shirt and pulling him to his feet. “You shot a good kid, my brother. But you shoot nobody else.”
Langley stared at him, breathing raggedly, hate shining from his bleeding ruined face. “I’d cut off my hands and feet for one chance at you, copper,” he cried softly. “I’d fix you good.”
“You had your chance, sonny,” Carmody said. “A thousand more wouldn’t help.” Turning Langley around, he twisted his wrist up between his shoulder blades and locked it there in the vise of his own big hand. “Eddie could have taken you front to front,” he said. “You’re not big-time, you’re all mouth. We’re going downtown now and I’ll turn you over to my brother’s friends. If you want your troubles to start sooner just get balky. I’ll break this arm of yours off and make you carry it.”
“I don’t scare, copper,” Langley said angrily.
Carmody hesitated in the bleak room and stared with bitter eyes into his own past. “No, we don’t scare, sonny,” he said. “God Himself can’t scare us. So we wind up like this. Little men begging for a break.”
“Who’s little?”
“You’re little enough to fit in the chair,” Carmody said. “That’s what counts. How old are you?”
“Twenty-six my next birthday.”
“A ripe old age,” Carmody said, and sighed. “Let’s go.”
He retrieved his revolver, opened the door and shoved Langley out into the dimly lighted hallway. The house was still and quiet. It was just about all over, Carmody knew, and he was restless and impatient for the final end of it. The power and drive that had always been a pressure within him seemed to be gone; even his anger had watered down to a heavy pervading bitterness. He was reaching for the knob when the doorbell broke clamorously through the silence.
Rogue Cop Page 16
