Don Pendleton - The Violent Streets

Roger Smalley raised a hand to dam the sudden flow of words.

"All right take it easy. On the telephone you mentioned a suspect."

Fran Traynor nodded excitedly.

"Yes, sir, that's the clincher. It turned up in a routine check on the local sanitariums."

And the assistant police commissioner of St. Paul sat there listening, while the attractive lady cop laid out the whole circumstantial case against one Courtney Gilman. He heard it all, feeling the old familiar tightness and burning in his stomach, keeping one eye riveted to the rearview mirror.

Fran was just finishing her presentation, her excited voice winding down, when a black car turned onto the gravel access road, closing the exit behind her compact. The doors on either side opened, disgorging several men in dark suits.

As Fran Traynor finished, Smalley idly unbuttoned his suit jacket, sliding a hand inside to encircle the butt of his holstered .38.

"I believe you may be on to something, Traynor," he said, smiling at her.

The lady cop started to answer that smile with a relieved one of her own, but it vanished as she saw the revolver in Smalley's hand, its squat muzzle aimed directly at her chest. Smalley broadened his grin, feeling better now.

"Now, if you'll hand over your purse..."

Instead, she flung it at him, aiming for his face, twisting away at the same instant and clawing for the interior door handle. Smalley batted the handbag aside and clubbed her hard behind the ear with his revolver. Her forehead smacked against the window glass, and she gave a stifled yelp as she rebounded, landing prostrate and unconscious with her head resting on the commissioner's thigh.

At that moment the passenger door of the Cadillac was opened, and one of the new arrivals leaned in, letting appreciative eyes wander over the provocative display of leg where Fran's skirt had hiked up during the struggle. He flashed Smalley a lecherous grin.

"Not bad, Commissioner," he chuckled.

Smalley's mouth turned down in distaste. This one was worse than Benny Copa.

"Put a lid on that," he snapped curtly. "You're here to do a job, nothing else."

The hardman lost his smile.

"Yeah, sure. We hold her with the other one until we hear from you."

Smalley nodded.

"Right. It shouldn't be more than an hour or two at the most."

"Okay." The man nodded.

He edged over to accommodate a second burly figure in the doorway, and together they leaned into the Caddy, hauling Fran Traynor outside and letting the skirt bunch up around her hips in the process. Roger Smalley heard the evil snicker again and turned away in disgust, closing his mind to it, waiting until the door clicked firmly shut.

He was alone once more.

The assistant police commissioner fired the Caddy's power plant and pulled away, avoiding the rearview mirror with his eyes. There was a sour taste in his mouth, as there always was when he was forced, at this stage of his life, to deal with scum. But he knew from grim experience that the human savages and garbage of the earth could have their uses... so long as they were firmly and strictly controlled.

Smalley was glad to be leaving them behind. And, at least temporarily, to be leaving his problems in their hands.

It seemed fitting, somehow. The dregs of the earth helping a basically decent man salvage his life and his career. Keeping him in the position he had clawed and fought for over the past fifteen years.

Not that the struggle had been so great since Jack Fawcett discovered Courtney Gilman, oh, no. But the nagging pain in his gut was the same, if not worse. And the worries were still there, damn right, in abundance.

Now Roger Smalley had a plan for eradicating those problems once and for all, without giving up any of his gains. It would require a modicum of luck, sure, but Smalley was feeling lucky that morning. Batting a thousand in the problems department.

And with luck, he might soon be free of the whole stinking Gilman dilemma.

Roger Smalley smiled to himself as his vehicle rolled onto pavement again and he nosed it back in the direction of his office.

Fran Traynor and her big, loose mouth were in the bag, and they were going to stay there. Damn right.

And the commissioner's problems were already starting to fade like the memory of a half-forgotten nightmare.

Lieutenant Jack Fawcett entered his office reluctantly. He had things on his mind, and he wasn't looking forward to writing up the dead-body reports on five cooling stiffs, not with all the other things he had to think about.

Damn Roger Smalley, anyway. And damn himself, for ever hesitating when the Gilman kid started spilling his guts down in interrogation room number four. Why in the hell had he ever thought of calling the commissioner — deputy chief then, he reminded himself sourly — to ask for advice on the case?

"Advice" my ass, he thought grimly.

He had seen a ticket to the gravy train, sure, and he'd put through the call to Smalley on the off chance that a hint in the right place might put him on board for a nice long ride.

It had turned out to be more like a one-way ticket to hell. At least for Jack Fawcett.

Smalley didn't have any complaints, of course. He was sitting up there next door to the commissioner's office and smoking his fat cigars without a single worry. Smalley had the world in his pocket, while Detective Lieutenant Jack Fawcett spent his days and nights wading in the sewer of man's violence. Smalley went to banquets while Fawcett went to autopsies, staring at rigid corpses under cruel fluorescent lights.

Five corpses in particular.

All of them under thirty, all female, all once attractive but bearing the trademark of an animal who mauled them and mutilated them, casting them aside like so much garbage in the street.

The first one of the five was free, okay. That one had been out of Fawcett's hands, beyond his control. But the other four...

He felt their ephemeral weight on his soul.

He knew, deep down where it mattered, that they were dead because of him, as much as because of the freaked-out psycho who wielded the knife.

The nightmares had started again, around the time of the Blancanales rape. Fawcett had thought, foolishly, that he was rid of them, but now he knew better. They were back to stay.

Each dream was the same — or almost. Each time he imagined himself at home, asleep in his own bed, when he was roused by a strange, indescribable sound outside the window. He would rise, picking up his service .38 from the bedside table, and pad softly to the window, peering outside into midnight darkness.

And the girls were always there. Pale and rigid, eyes locked open in death, crusty stains upon their fluttering shrouds. And each one held an arm outstretched, accusing fingers pointed straight at him, for Christ's sake, while they moaned and wailed their wordless accusations through pale, pale lips.

There had been one girl in the first dream.

Now there were four.

Jack Fawcett wondered how many his front yard could hold.

He flopped down in his office chair, and for the first time his eyes caught the note lying on top of his desk. He recognized the spidery handwriting of the dick on the graveyard shift, and he held the note close, reading slowly.

It said, simply: "Jack — Call Pinky."

Okay.

"Pinky" was one of several street snitches who served Jack Fawcett on a semiregular basis. As every working detective knew, the majority of cases could never be solved by the old Sherlock Holmes routine. You needed a good, reliable pigeon to finger your suspect and drop the case in your lap when the going got tough. Then a good cop could keep up his record, and the snitch could be happy with whatever crumbs were passed down the chain of command.