Хал Эллсон - Masters of Noir - Volume 3

Jordan heard the captain say, “Garfield was a wrong one. He shouldn’t have been a cop.”

“But he was a cop. A cop on duty.” Eglin was unaccountably sharp.

“I know, I know,” said Sline irritably. “You’re not the only man in the department that feels it.”

Eglin grunted. Silence settled in the next room.

It gave Jordan time to think. He needed it. He was in trouble now, if he hadn’t been before. They were going to burn plenty when he told them no soap. He should have told the captain straight out. The way it sounded, Crider and the other two were going to be turned loose. And then Jordan was supposed to con the girl. If he did, he would be what Eglin and Sline thought he was, a hit-and-run guy with women.

Already, somebody else thought that. Sline’s search through the department looking for a smoothie with dames, and somebody told him Ron Jordan was his man. Well, they had him wrong. He wasn’t a chaser. He didn’t have to chase. Women liked him; he liked women. That was all, and what was wrong with that? He played with women who knew the score. The married ones, and the dewy-eyed innocents, he left strictly alone.

A door was opened in the next room. A voice said, “In here, Miss Berkey.”

He heard Captain Sline say, “Did the matron tell you this is bag and baggage for you?”

“Bag and baggage?” came Elsa Berkey’s low reply. “I don’t understand.”

There’s the tipoff on her, thought Jordan. It was her voice. Deep and husky. Not unpleasant. But that throatiness told it. He didn’t have to look at her to know she was a tramp. Gin and cigarettes did that to her voice. Mostly chain-smoking. It had put callouses on her vocal cords.

“It’s jail talk,” explained Sline. “Means you collect your things because you’re going free.”

She asked quickly, “Does that mean — are you freeing my brother, too?”

“We are,” said Sline.

Ben Eglin said, “Go on, Elsa. Ask us if Joe Crider goes out, too.” He wasn’t polite like Sline. “That’s what’s on your mind, isn’t it?”

“I wondered,” she said.

“He goes out,” said Sline. “All three of you. We can’t hold you any longer without filing a charge, and we haven’t the evidence. You knew that.”

“No,” she said. “I didn’t know that.”

She was lobbing them back quietly; there was something subdued about her that did not fit her voice. Jordan took a look. She was standing before Sline’s desk, legs together, body poised in natural balance. Long red hair that picked up a gleam from the light above her. A regular profile, with high cheekbones shadowing the hallows below, the lips compressed too tight. Something about her puzzled him.

Sline spoke again. “We never intended to file a charge against you. It’s Joe Crider we want. You could have helped us. You didn’t. We have to remember that.”

She pulled her eyes away from Sline’s and sent a quick, careful gaze about the room. Jordan got a glimpse of gray eyes. The voice and the eyes told Jordan enough. He had her pegged. The puzzling thing, the thing about her that Jordan couldn’t see though he knew he was looking right at it — what the devil was it?

“It’s not too late for you to straighten out your story,” said Eglin. “Things have a way of popping up. Suppose we find a witness who saw a woman of your height and build going into Crider’s School Street store at around ten o’clock that night. That would mean you were there when Crider shot Garfield, wouldn’t it?”

She turned a little, studying his bland and ugly face. “I was home,” she said.

Sline broke in, impatient with Eglin. “There’s another matter, Miss Berkey. We’re worried about your brother.”

Her attention came quickly back to Sline. He went on, “If Crider killed Garfield — and he did — your brother helped him. Or at least saw it. You know that. Bart was there, and admits he was there. You say you were not. That would make Bart the only eye-witness who could ever testify against Crider. Crider might want to do something about that.”

They let that soak in, giving her the fixed-stare business with it. This was what they had been leading up to, planting the fear in her.

“We don’t want a second killing,” continued Sline. “We’d like to hold Bart for his own protection. But our hands are tied. You and Bart tied ’em. Now let me give you some advice. Don’t try to leave town, because you might need friends, and we’re your friends whether you know it or not. And stop working for Joe Crider, both of you. It’d just be giving Crider more chance to knife you.”

“But I—” She stopped, then went on coolly, “May I go now?”

“Wait for your brother,” said Sline. “One of the boys will run you both home in a police car. We’re going to deliver you safe. Then you won’t be our responsibility any more.”

She turned and walked out without a word, Jordan’s gaze following her slim hips. He couldn’t tell too much about her age — she might be twenty-five, she might be thirty. And that elusive quality about her, that thing that he was so close to seeing....

In the other room Captain Sline said, “I can’t make up my mind about her.”

“I can,” said Eglin. He was venomous. “Crider’s woman.”

“I don’t know. If she was his woman she wouldn’t be putting in eight hours behind the counter at his store.”

“See here, Frank,” said Eglin. “Why don’t you come out with it?” He was suddenly, harshly explosive. “You and the chief and the commissioners think Garfield was taking. You figure Garfield was knocking down from Crider on his bookmaking. You think he tried to hike the ante and got himself killed for it. You won’t say so because you don’t want the public to hear about a crooked police officer. That’s why you’re bucking me on a cop killer. And you’re all dead wrong!”

“Nobody’s bucking you, Ben,” said Sline mildly. “You’re all steamed up because we’ve got to let Crider go.”

“It won’t wash,” Eglin went on. “You ought to know Crider better than that. He knows how we feel about a cop killer. The last guy in the world he would kill would be a cop, if he used his head.”

“He was using his head,” put in Sline dryly. “He used it so well you couldn’t make a case on him.”

“He’s using it now. But he wasn’t when he shot Garfield. And what does that mean? A cool customer like Crider — what would make him go off his rocker? The dame that just walked out of here! Maybe Garfield was taking; I don’t know. But he didn’t go too far until he tried to take Crider’s girl. Probably she made a play for him. She got Garfield killed, and I’ll bet a month’s pay she was there when it happened.”

The far door opened and a young fellow was pushed in. A kid, really. Jordan figured him to be about sixteen. He was dragging his left leg — a club foot. He came slowly up to the desk.

Sline said abruptly, “Bart, we’re turning you loose.”

“Yeah,” said Eglin. “Take good care of yourself. Lock your door nights.”

Bart Berkey looked from one to the other. He had dark, deepset eyes that turned in upon himself, high cheekbones like his sister, and a weak face. He was scared, of Eglin more than the captain. He pulled jerkily at a cigarette.

“We’re letting Crider loose, too,” said Sline. “He’ll be coming around to see you. What you going to tell him?”

“I—” Bart swallowed.

Eglin didn’t let him get any farther. “You going to tell him you almost cracked? You going to tell him you almost put the whole thing on the line for us? You’re not going to do that, are you, Bart? You know what he would do to you, don’t you?”

It was nice teamwork. The old one-two. Against the girl they couldn’t work it well. But it was working on Bart.