David Alexander: Masters of Noir: Volume 4

I was going to get him.

“Look it over again,” I said, sliding Calder’s file over to Fischer again. “Skip the record. Look at the picture.”

Dark black hair. A flat face, not too bad-looking. Hard eyes, a long nose, a little scar on the chin. I don’t know how he got the scar. Maybe he cut himself shaving.

“You said we pick him up today. Were you kidding?”

“I don’t kid. I was serious.”

“They found evidence?”

“No.”

He looked at me. He was afraid to open his mouth. Gutless.

“We worry him a little. Don’t bother your head about it. Go get the car and meet me out front. And wear a gun.”

He didn’t say anything, just went off for the car. I checked my gun, then stuck it back in the holster. I picked up Calder’s file, and took a good long look at it. I let the face burn into my brain. I stood there for a minute or two and hated.

Then I went out to the car where Fischer was waiting.

The building was fancy. A uniformed doorman stood at attention out in front. I had to show him my shield before he let us inside. He was there to keep out undesirables. Unless they lived in the penthouse.

The carpet was deep in the lobby. The elevator rose in silence. I stood there and hated Calder.

He had the whole top floor. I got out of the elevator and took my gun out of its holster, wondering whether or not the doorman had called Calder yet. Probably.

I rang the bell.

“Yeah?”

A penthouse overlooking the park didn’t get Hell’s Kitchen out of his speech. Nothing would.

“Police.”

“Whattaya want?”

“Open the door and shut up.”

A few seconds later the door opened. He was short, five-six or five-seven. He was wearing a silk bathrobe and slippers that looked expensive. The apartment was well-furnished but for what he had paid he could have used an interior decorator. There was a shoddiness about the place. Maybe the shoddiness was Calder.

“Come on in,” he said. “You use a drink?”

I ignored him. “You’re under arrest,” I told him.

“What for?”

“Murder.”

“Yeah?” A wide smile. “Somebody got killed?”

“Johnny Blue.”

“I’m covered,” he said. No I’m innocent but I’m covered . “I was playing cards with some fellows.”

“Uh-huh.”

He shrugged heroically. “You want, we can go down to the station. My lawyer’ll have me out right away. I’m clean.”

“You’re never clean,” I said. “You were born filthy.”

The smile widened. But there was uncertainty behind it. I was getting to him.

“You’re cheap and rotten,” I said. “You’re a punk. You spend a fortune on cologne and it still doesn’t cover the smell.”

Now the smile was gone.

“Your sister sleeps with bums,” I said. “Your mother was the cheapest whore on the West Side. She died of syphilis.”

That did it. He was a few feet away — then he lowered his head and charged. I could have clubbed him with the gun. I didn’t.

I shot him.

He gave a yell like a wounded steer and fell to his knees. The bullet had taken him in the right shoulder. I guess it hurt. I hoped so.

“You shot him.” It was Fischer talking.

“Good thinking,” I told him. “You’re on the ball.”

“Now what?”

I shrugged. “We can take him in,” I suggested. “We can book him for resisting arrest and a few other things.”

“Not murder?”

“You heard him,” I said. “He’s clean.”

I looked at Fischer. That was the answer to my college cop, my buddy. Here was a murderer, a murderer with a shoulder wound. Now we would be nice to him. Get him to a hospital quick before he lost too much blood. Maybe drop the resisting arrest charge because, after all, he was a sick man.

I had my gun in my hand. I stepped back a few feet and aimed. I watched the play of expressions on Calder’s face. He didn’t know whether or not to believe it.

I shot him in the face.

I talked to Fischer while I found a gun in a drawer, picked it up in a towel, and wrapped Calder’s fingers around it. It made it look good — he had drawn on me, I shot him in the shoulder, he went on and held onto the gun, and I shot him dead. It would look good enough — there wasn’t going to be any investigation.

“Maybe thirty killings,” I said. “That’s what this animal had to his credit. He made beating the law a business. He didn’t fool around. And there was no way to get him.”

No answer from my partner.

“So this time he lost. He doesn’t fool around. Well, neither do I.”

I knew Fischer wasn’t satisfied. He wouldn’t blab, but it would worry him. He would feel uncomfortable with me. I don’t fit into his moral scheme of things. Maybe he’ll put in for a transfer.

I hope so.

They came through the prison gate, sixteen of them, handcuffed two by two, with four city policemen to deliver them to the prison. They saw their first convict in the shower room, a trusty who took their civilian clothes and thumbed them to the showers. Afterwards, they went along one at a time, and Macalay found himself in a barber chair. Clippers ran over his hair, and he was out again.

He looked down at his chest. His number was 116911. No. His name was that; he was 116911. And would be for quite a while.

He’d been here before, on business, to question prisoners. But it was different now. He was not a visitor with a badge in his pocket and a gun checked at the main gate, with a name and a job, a salary and a whistle to blow if the guards were slow letting him out. He was 116911, in a blue denim suit that was too tight across the shoulders and too long in the legs. But he was still big and he still looked like a cop was supposed to look. A cop for a mural or a Police Athletic League poster. He had the requirements, size and an ugly sort of handsomeness.

From his new viewpoint, he saw, somewhat to his surprise, that the guards did very little more than stand around. The actual bossing was done by trusties. Trusties had issued them their clothes; trusties formed them into lines. Now a trusty marched them to an isolation barracks. “You’ll be here three weeks,” he said. “Till the doc’s sure you ain’t gonna break out with something an’ infect us tenderer guys. I’m your barracks leader; the guys call me Nosy.”

One of the new fish said: “This is like the Marine Corps all over again.”

“If you was in the Marines, I don’t know how we won any wars,” Nosy said calmly. “Okay. There’s a bed for each of you. A shelf at the top, box at the bottom. There’s a john through that door. You can’t go no place but in here, but if you want lib’ary books, write ’em out, any they’ll bring ’em to ya. Any questions you got ask me now.”

Macalay said: “Can we have pencil and paper?”

Nosy didn’t answer.

One of the other cons said: “How about radios?”

“There’s headsets under your shelves, hooked into the prison system... No more questions? I’ll write a duty after each guy’s name, put it on the bulletin board here. That door leads to my room.”

“How about you picking up an infection from us?” the former Marine asked.

Nosy said: “Let’s see, you’re Rodel, aren’t you? Why, Rodel, the warden figgers anything I haven’t had’d be plain interesting. Keep the doc on his toes.”

Nosy stood up and tacked the sheet on the bulletin board and went into his room.

Macalay said: “Seems like a nice kind of guy.”

Nobody said anything. One by one the men got up and looked at their assignments. Rodel got to take care of the washbasins; he told a con named Beales: “You gotta call me mister. You’re the wiper of the johns; you gotta look up to me.”