Хал Эллсон - Masters of Noir - Volume 3

“I told you the truth!” Bart burst out. “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t see anything. Elsa knows I didn’t.”

Jordan saw the glisten of tears. Still, you couldn’t despise him too much. That club foot had beaten him and shaped him; he was just a kid without the stuff to overcome it. Bart hung his head. For him, there was an object of terror somewhere that was more fearful even than Ben Eglin.

Sline punched at him. “Crider is going to worry about you. You’re his soft spot. You’re the one that might let your tongue slip. He’s going to think about that, but one day he’ll make up his mind and start looking for you.”

“It’ll be too late then,” Eglin nodded. “We won’t be around to wipe your nose.” His voice changed, became brutal. “Your sister is waiting for you. Get out!”

Bart Berkey left. There was another wait, during which Sline and Eglin exchanged low-voiced growls. Jordan still had the girl on his mind.

The far door opened again and Joe Crider walked into the room. He was a trim, compact man with a good-humored mouth. A roundish face, not a line in it, matched the gray at his temples. He wore rimless glasses, the lenses cut almost square, reflecting the overhead light, blanking out his eyes, making them shiny apertures without depth. He was smiling when he turned to look across at Sline and down at Eglin. A man sure of himself, sure he had won. But his cigarette was long, newly lighted. He had fired up just outside the door and taken one deep drag to relieve the tension inside of him.

“Well, Inspector,” he said. His words came flat and soft. “Is this good-bye?”

Sline gave the reply. “You go out,” he said. “But don’t go far. We’re not through with you.”

“So?” said Crider. “I get ridden, eh? You make it a bad job and you’re sore, so you ride Joe Crider. How long?”

“It was a cop you killed,” Eglin snapped.

Crider took the hand from his pocket and raised it, palm up. “Why? Why should I want to kill Bob Garfield?”

“Bart Berkey knows,” said Eglin. “And we’ll know when Bart figures out he’s being a chump. He’ll come crawling back to tell us the rest of it. That’s why we ride you, Crider. And if something happens to Berkey, we’re not going to sit on our behinds, we’re going to pin it on you. Just you bear that in mind.”

Ron Jordan got the full force of it, then. Eglin had been systematically setting them all on edge, pitting them one against the other, as a means of making something happen that would break the Garfield killing. And ladies-man Jordan had a noble part to play. He was to be the observer — the buzzard flying overhead. He must con the girl to stay close inside, be in a position to report whatever happened. Jordan saw it all now.

Ben Eglin stared at Crider and played out his perfidy, that might mean the life of Bart Berkey. Crider turned his head to examine the half-open door; the glare on his glasses gave Jordan the queer impression that opaque, depthless eyes were fixed on him. Slowly Crider brought his attention around to Sline, studying him, then to Eglin.

“Let’s stop horsing each other,” he said. “Bart’s a kid. He couldn’t stand up to you. If he had known anything, you’d have got it out of him. Now tell me, why with the cop-pressure off, should he suddenly start talking?”

“That’s right,” said Eglin, ignoring Crider’s question. “He couldn’t stand up to me. You should have seen him cry like a baby and call for his sister when I hammered at him about a woman being in your joint that night.”

Eglin dropped it there, left it to Crider to figure what might have been added but wasn’t. Bart Berkey had almost broken. Eglin didn’t have long enough to work on him. Eglin couldn’t hold him any longer without filing a charge, and Bart didn’t confess enough to make a charge stick. That was what Crider was supposed to think. It was clear, without Eglin coming out and saying it, that Bart was so weak his silence couldn’t be depended on and that he was the kind of a kid who might crack at any time.

Captain Sline stood up. “All right, Crider,” he said. “You can go, now.”

Before the door closed on Crider, he looked back, smiling. The last little trick was his. And maybe all tricks. Jordan couldn’t for the life of him figure out under which one of the three Sline and Eglin had set the keg of dynamite.

This was the time for Jordan to count himself out. They couldn’t touch him for it. There was nothing in the manual that said a traffic cop could be ordered to do a job on a woman.

Crossing toward Sline he said, “I tried to tell you, Captain—”

“Tell it later, Jordan,” broke in Eglin. “Go change to a suit and pack a bag. Then come back to homicide. I’ll be there. You’re moving in across the hall from her tonight.”

Jordan came on. He told himself, Don’t look at Ben Eglin. Don’t look in those eyes or he’s got you. He looked down at Sline’s desk. The ash tray there had two stubs in it. One butt was Bart Berkey’s, the other was Crider’s. If Elsa Berkey were a chain smoker she would have needed a smoke when Eglin was working her over. But she hadn’t smoked. That was the thing that didn’t fit. Her throaty voice was natural.

Sline spoke. “What did you try to tell me, Jordan?”

“Nothing. Only — only you didn’t ask me if I would.”

Eglin came around the corner of the desk. “How long have you been in the department, Jordan?”

“A bit over a year.”

“That’s long enough. You should know when a police officer is murdered, a chunk of you dies, too. You should know if a cop killer ever got away with it, it would be open season on the department for every cheap gunman in town. You should know when a police officer is murdered, the wives of every one of us don’t sleep nights, wondering if their man is next. You wouldn’t think about the wives, would you? You don’t know that kind of women.” The voice sank, mimicking Jordan with a world of contempt, “ ‘You didn’t ask me if I would.’ Godamighty!”

Ben Eglin spun on his heel and stalked out.

In the silence that followed, Captain Sline said, “You’d better run along now and pack.”

Ron Jordan stood in the middle of the strange living room. The couch’s velour was a dirty brown, its nap slicked by time. The wood pieces bore the scars of conflict with a hundred tenants.

He said to himself, How did you get here and what do you do next?

He hadn’t kept his nose clean. That was how he got here. He had got himself tagged at headquarters as a lady killer, and now Ben Eglin was using him. He had to warm up the girl across the hall. That’s what he had to do next. The world was full of floozies who didn’t smoke.

In homicide, an hour ago, Ben Eglin had said, “We shook down the Berkey apartment while we had them here. Found nothing. The one across the hall was empty and we grabbed it. The landlady knows who you are. We’ll have a phone in there by morning. There’s no time tonight to fill you in on background. Come back here in the morning; get it then.”

Jordan had got to the door with his bag when Eglin’s voice reached for him again. “The games you play with that dame are police business, Jordan. You’re going up there to get information out of her. Don’t forget it.”

Odd, how this little runt of a man could make Jordan forget the rule book. Jordan had snarled, “You’re funny. When I want to have fun with a girl, she’ll be one I pick.”

This living room looked down three stories to the street. In front of him, as he stood, was a kitchenette-dinette. On his right, a bedroom. Then a bath. Then another bedroom. Two bedrooms. That might need explaining. Why would he need two bedrooms? He could tell her he had to find an apartment quick, and this was all he could find. Or he could work up a leer and let it answer for him.